


How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful

by heartofthesunrise, rosiedoesfic



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alien Abduction, Aliens, Apocalypse, Discussion of mental health difficulties, Grief, Hiatus, M/M, Mistreatment of a minor, Off-screen character 'death', Post-Hiatus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-08 07:58:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 71,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12250245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofthesunrise/pseuds/heartofthesunrise, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosiedoesfic/pseuds/rosiedoesfic
Summary: Fic byrosiedoesfic| Music mix byheartofthesunriseJoe didn't even want to take the scenic route home from Las Vegas, but Pete never listens, so they're in Death Valley when the ships pass overhead. That's the only reason they're not taken. They should have been. They could all have been at home with their loved ones, taken alongside them. But they weren't.It quickly becomes apparent that the whole planet's population has been decimated. All population centres have been stripped of every human inhabitant - there are no bodies, no destruction aside from the fires that burn from kitchens left unattended and cars suddenly driverless in the streets - everyone is just gone.So, they do the only thing they can think of - they go home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is not the fic I expected to write. It is, ultimately, a Patroh fic set against a backdrop of a massive global incident. It isn't really a survival fic or an apocalypse fic, but it is set in the context of one, at a time soon after the band returned from hiatus.
> 
> It is written with a great deal of fondness for Marie Trohman in particular. No malice is intended to any individual featured in the story.
> 
>    
>  **Written for the Bandom Big Bang 2017**
> 
>  
> 
>  The wonderful [heartofthesunrise](http://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofthesunrise/profile) has **created a[playlist](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12342795)** to complement the piece. Make sure you check it out and let them know what you think.
> 
> [](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12342795)   
>    
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> Huge thanks to the wonderful [distortedmya](http://archiveofourown.org/users/distortedmya/pseuds/distortedmya) for being there to keep me on track, to [AndSoSheWaits](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AndSoSheWaits/pseuds/AndSoSheWaits) for stepping in to proofread and give a final opinion at the last minute, to and to [heyginger](http://archiveofourown.org/users/heyginger/pseuds/heyginger) who was critically important to this fic early on.
> 
> Also, thank you to everyone who put up with my meltdowns, especially to [shiny_starlight](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shiny_starlight/pseuds/shiny_starlight) who literally lives with me and had to put up with this IRL.

**How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful** **  
** _I'll be in the desert just wishing on every star_

 

They were a little more than four hours outside LA when it happened. The air was chokingly dusty, the afternoon heat burning hot, even through Joe’s shirt. He was slumped, shotgun, in Pete’s SUV trying to stay as still as possible to avoid generating any additional heat. The aircon was fucked - needed more fluid or something, he didn’t really know, but it was Pete’s fault for not maintaining his car before driving it across the desert ‘because it’ll be more fun than flying’. The result was that the only thing that stopped him stripping to his underwear was the fact he suspected the windshield would act like a magnifying glass and scorch him to death. Andy was in the restroom and Patrick and Pete were in the tiny gas station store, picking up snacks for the rest of the journey back to LA. Pete had insisted on taking a diversion through Death Valley National Park for the novelty, swearing he was doing it for Joe, even though Joe had repeatedly told him he just wanted to go home. It had been a long weekend of bonding in Vegas for Pete’s birthday and he was tired, hungover, two grand worse off and desperate for a flight back to New York.  
  
He closed his eyes for a moment and hmmed comfortably at the feeling of the sun disappearing behind a cloud. Except, he remembered a second later, the sky was wide and blue and empty. There were no clouds today. His eyes blinked open, immediately casting their way up to the sky outside the window.  
  
“What the fucking fuck…?” he whispered, staring at the huge, black shapes tearing into the atmosphere above him as he pushed open the door and climbed out of the car. He knew, instantly, what they were. He’d seen enough sci-fi apocalypse movies to know, without a shadow of doubt, what was happening. It filled him with dread. The heat didn’t matter anymore, nothing mattered in that moment, because ships, bigger than anything he’d ever conceived of, were passing overhead. He couldn’t even think about moving - running, screaming for help - he just stared up at the enormous, steel-grey craft, vaguely aware of Patrick stepping hesitantly out of the store, moving slowly closer, gaze fixed on them as they moved into the distance. They didn’t make a sound.  
  
And then his phone began vibrating in his pocket, the tinny bell tone incongruous against the silence.  
  
“Joe? Baby, where are you?” Marie’s voice sobbed on the line, shrill and hysterical. “I’m s-so scared - there - there’s - ”  
  
“Ships,” he said, softly, and he knew. He knew he was never going to see her again. The knowledge was strangely numbing. “I know. I know, hon. I love you, don’t be afraid.”  
  
“They’re - they’re so big - why are they - ?”  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t know - but they’re here, too. Just - _I love you_ , okay? Marie? Do you hear me?”  
  
“Y-Yes - I - I love –”  
  
Silence.  
  
“Marie?”  
  
No response.  
  
“ _Marie_?”  
  
He looked at his phone as the screen blinked, ‘Call ended’. Frantically, he pressed her name to redial but the call was terminated instantly, without even going to voicemail. He sank to the dust beside the wheel of the car, his legs unable to hold him any longer.  
  
Somewhere off to the side of him, Patrick was cursing - dialling and redialling a failing connection. "No - no, no, no - don't fucking do this, not now… don't fucking…" A second later the handset was skittering across the gritty road, small chips of plastic flying off of it. The cursing didn't stop, it just got more shrill, more panicked.  
  
There were footsteps, too, light and deliberate - Andy's - and behind him, on the driver's side of the car, a door was opened and the radio was suddenly on. No music, just a voice - it sounded recorded - instructing them to remain calm.  
  
Another, smaller shadow cast across him and he looked up to see Pete staring into the distance, the way the ships had been headed. Not saying anything, just frozen in a bizarre, rasping laugh, a confused frown pushing at his brow. They were so large and so high that Joe was sure he could still see one, a speck on the horizon, probably over Las Vegas, he thought.  
  
They must have remained that way for several minutes, but he wasn't sure how long it was. He was vaguely aware of Patrick moving to where Andy was sitting, listening to the automated announcement, waiting for something real to happen.  
  
Pete pulled out his phone suddenly, scrolling aggressively through an app. "Fuck."  
  
Joe blinked up at him, half-silhouetted in the sun, but didn't ask.  
  
"Nobody's tweeting."  
  
"Huh?" Patrick's voice asked.

"Nobody. Is Fucking. Tweeting."  
  
"Don't you think that maybe, y'know, they have _bigger problems_ , right now?"  
  
"What rock do you live under? The first thing people do is fucking tweet! But there's nothing - look!"  
  
He held up the screen as if they could all read it from several feet away.  
  
"Try CNN, if there's actually any signal," Andy instructed levelly, switching from station to station, finding only identical recorded messages.  
  
Pete tapped at his screen fiercely, and in the distance Joe watched as little streaks of light shot up into the atmosphere, small flashes at the highest blue he could see.  
  
He started to climb to his feet, pressing one hand against the hood and immediately drawing it back, burned by the desert sun on the metalwork. "Fuck!" He kicked at the rubber of the tyre in frustration, then again and again.  
  
"Woah, Troh - calm down!" Pete started, reaching out to pull him away. "That's my car, dude."  
  
"Do you seriously care about your fucking car when your girlfriend and your kid were just - ?" He trailed off, unable to say it. "You're a fucking asshole."  
  
"You don't know what just happened - how can you possibly fucking know?"  
  
"Because she called me! I was talking with her!"  
  
Pete's face turned slightly ashen and his hand clamped around Joe's forearm. "Did she say what they were? What they were doing, or whatever?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Then how can you know?"  
  
"I just do!" Joe replied, yanking his arm free.  
  
"Right, and you're totally not assuming anything based on the shitty sci-fi you watch, kind of?"  
  
"No, I'm assuming based on the fucking _spaceships_ I just saw, and the sound of my wife's actual voice as it happened!"  
  
Pete rolled his eyes, like Joe was the one acting deluded. "You really think any race smart enough to get their asses here would come just to fuck things up?"  
  
"Did I say that?"  
  
"Pretty much."  
  
Joe thought about smacking him in the mouth, but he could hear Patrick still cursing and mumbling anxiously behind him, and he turned to watch him return to gather up the pieces of his iPhone, like collecting them in his hands would somehow make it work again. It was a sad, futile little scene and he found himself picking up a piece of his case, nonetheless, and moving over to press it into his palm. Patrick smiled at him gratefully, but there was a shake to it, a knowledge that it wouldn't help at all. His face was pale, in spite of the heat, eyes wide behind his glasses.  
  
"Guys!" Andy was calling from the car, suddenly, cranking up the volume so they could hear.  
  
"People of the United States of America, this is your President speaking. This morning, a little over ten minutes ago, and as many of you will have witnessed, vessels of unknown origin entered Earth's atmosphere and approached many of our major population centres. We do not know what their intentions were, nor whether the beings within them are friends or foe. What I can tell you, is that these ships are now departing and contact with our loved ones and colleagues in major cities from New York to Los Angeles has been lost. Ottawa, Moscow, London, Paris, Berlin, Pretoria, New Delhi, Tokyo, Beijing, Sydney… all have fallen silent. At this time of great uncertainty, I ask you all to remain calm. Do not attempt to get to loved ones who may be elsewhere, do not return to cities which have been targeted - a list of which will follow this message. Until we have a clearer understanding of who these visitors are and why they are here, it is in all our interests - as individuals and as a nation - to remain where you are, where you are safe. The military has been deployed to all areas affected and we will bring you more information as we have it confirmed.  
  
"I know that right now, you may be scared. That perhaps some of your greatest questions about our universe may have been answered, while others may have been asked of your faith and your understanding of life as we know it. There will be time to work through these questions, to make sense of the new information that is becoming available to us. But now is a time for peace, to stand alongside each other as citizens of Earth. Embrace each other. Help each other. Support each other. Your government will be there to assist you.  
  
"Keep your radios on and wait for further information."  
  
The list of cities that followed was long; recited alphabetically, Chicago was one of the first.  
  
"They were everywhere," Patrick said, softly.  
  
"Yeah, but what I wanna know is _why_?" Andy replied, frowning at the dash. "If they'd destroyed them - if they wanted to take over or attack - we'd know. They'd have said so in the address. This is weird - really weird."  
  
"Maybe they just came to check in," Pete shrugged, folding his arms. "Always figured it was only a matter of time."  
  
"No. This is fucked up. They've done something, and it's fucking bad, and it's only, like, a matter of time before we hear about it."  
  
"You don't know that, Joe…"  
  
"Yes, I fucking do! I heard her voice, yeah? Do you understand that? I heard the fucking moment she -"  
  
"Well, if that's the case, be fucking grateful you got to say goodbye," Pete snapped.  
  
Andy pulled himself out of the car, half standing, to address them both like they were bickering kids. "Hey, you heard what Obama said: stay calm, support each other. No fighting."  
  
"You know what, that's easy for you to say, you're the only one without a wife or a girlfriend who -"  
  
"No, but I have a mom. And I have friends. People I care about. Right now, I just feel damn lucky that three of them are here."  
  
That shut them both up, but Patrick seemed to suddenly remember that he too had a mother, and siblings, and a father, all of whom lived in or around Chicago.  
  
"Oh, God…" he murmured, pressing his hands over his mouth.  
  
"Listen, we can't just sit around here doing nothing at all. We need to do something. Safest bet, is to pick up basics - water, a little food - just so we can make it for a couple of days. I don't wanna be out here unprepared."  
  
"I don't wanna be out here, period," Joe muttered. He hated the heat, he hated the dry air, he'd never wanted to come to Death Valley to fucking begin with. He didn't even want to come back to the fucking band, for that matter, and if he hadn't, he'd still have been in New York, or wherever Marie was, now.  
  
"Well, you are, so you kind of need to deal with it, okay? Hopefully, by nightfall we'll have the all clear to get back to LA and you can get your flight home, alright?"  
  
Beside him, Pete was nodding, arms wrapped across himself. "Maybe we ought to scope out a motel or something, in case we have to be out here over night."  
  
"In the middle of the desert?" Joe snapped.  
  
"I saw a resort a way back. There has to be something, kind of."  
  
The gas station store was small. There wasn't even a coffee machine. They gathered bottles of water - and then more at Andy's instruction - along with enough protein bars to gag an elephant, whole display boxes pulled off the shelf and dropped on the counter with useless, nutritionless snacks that Andy looked at with disdain but Joe was buying anyway because the world was possibly ending so what did it fucking matter, anymore?  
  
The old man, sitting at the register in a silence disturbed only by the whirring of the ceiling fan, looked at them like they were insane but took Joe's card without comment. At least banking systems still seemed to be working for now… It sat strangely with Joe that the man probably didn't know, and none of them made a move to tell him. _Hey - just so you know, the apocalypse has started. You might wanna keep hold of this stuff.  
  
_ It took them an hour to find the place, driving back down dusty desert roads, Andy at the wheel, Pete navigating. Joe sat in the back, next to Patrick, watching the pure blue sky for some kind of sign, but it was still and endless and it reminded him of the sea in Hawaii - clear and beautiful but full of unknown dangers. Beside him, Patrick carefully pressed pieces of plastic back into place, the screen of his iPhone too shattered to read, regardless. Neither of them said anything.  
  
The resort Pete had seen was some kind of Old West pastiche, with rooms that cost more per night than his share of their first apartment did per month. The woman on the front desk looked shaken to her pearl necklace, but still gave them a doubtful look and advised them of the prices like she didn't think this bunch of scruffy ne'er do wells could afford a night there. Pete just smiled at her with a snide placidity and all of his teeth, and asked if they took his Platinum Amex.  
  
"Just one room?" she asked, plucking the card from his fingertips.  
  
"As long as it sleeps four adults."  
  
It had been a long time since they'd shared rooms - they could afford not to, now, and often they'd have wives or partners along for the trip - but this time, Joe didn't challenge it. The idea of having the others close, tonight, was reassuring. What if he woke in the dark and went looking for them, to find the whole place deserted?  
  
"We have a twin with two kings, but if you'd rather have two rooms with twins - "  
  
"Ma'am, right now, I don't want to let the only people I know I have left out of my sight. So, we'll take the one twin."  
  
Her expression changed at that, and she gave them a pitying smile and nodded. "Right this way."  
  
Walking across the ranch, past an old-timey saloon-style restaurant and a museum devoted to a local mineral, was jarringly surreal. It reinforced the feeling that all of this was a horrible dream. The kind of anxiety dream he'd wake from in a cold sweat, startled by his own voice in the room.  
  
The room was decked out in crisp, boutique bedding with exposed stonework on one wall and an attempt at a traditional ranch house-style. It looked like something Marie would laugh at in a magazine. Dropping his case, he sank down on the end of the first bed, getting his phone out to try her number again. Her beautiful, smiling face looked up at him from the handset as it tried to connect. For an instant - a momentary flash of hope - his heart jumped into his mouth as the line beeped and her voice answered, only for him to realise a fraction of a second later that it was her voicemail kicking in. That hadn't happened earlier - maybe the ships had killed the satellite signals, maybe she was fine after all, maybe he could get back to New York and find her! He stood up, pressing his fingers over his other ear, pacing as the others dropped their things.  
  
"Marie - hon, it's me." He saw Patrick's eyes light up and turned away, not wanting to see the expression change on his friend's face as he realised. "I just wanted you to know I'm safe - I'm at some, like, novelty resort in Death Valley. Can you call me when you get this? I need to know you're all good, okay? I love you."  
  
He hung up and turned to find Patrick pressing at the shattered screen on his iPhone.  
  
"Do you want to try on mine?" he offered.  
  
"Can I?"  
  
"No dude, I'd totally joke about letting you call your wife in the middle of the fucking apocalypse."  
  
Patrick laughed grimly and took the phone with a nod. "Thanks."  
  
He waited, watching Patrick's face for the moment the call was answered, only to see it fall as Elisa's voicemail was activated, too.  
  
Over by the french doors, Pete was going through a similar routine. Only Andy didn't have his phone in his hand; he was clutching the TV remote, scrolling to a rolling news channel, hunting for an update.  
  
Joe sank back down on to the foot of the bed beside Patrick and they cast each other disheartened looks.  
  
"Bunk buddies?" he offered, lifting an arm to allow Patrick to slide under it, because that was the only comfort he had to give, right now. That and the fact that he'd rather share with Patrick than the other two.  
  
"Yeah," Patrick nodded, forcing a smile and tucking an arm around Joe for a squeeze. "Thanks."  
  
CNN was showing shaky amateur footage of dark shapes passing high overhead. The narrative just voices speculating about what had happened, confirming that contact had been lost with all major cities and reiterating the instruction to remain wherever they were. There was nothing - nothing at all - to tell them what had happened, why they'd come and where they'd gone.  
  
That was almost the worst part - not knowing why this was happening.  
  
The room was air conditioned, at least, and Joe slumped back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, sucking on his e-cigarette. The voices - both real and televised - were half-drowned out by the pounding of his hangover reminding him that it existed. He was beginning to regret sampling all that scotch with Patrick, now, wondering when his tolerance had outstripped Joe's own. Patrick just remained perched beside him, legs crossed under himself, pressing the fractured screen on his phone hopefully.  
  
They remained that way for hours, hardly moving, not saying anything - all slowly trying to process what was happening, in their own way.  
  
The sun had begun its descent toward setting, when Pete finally asked a proper question. He'd sunk down on the floor against the door frame overlooking the patio, a long time ago, arms draped over his knees, a fixed scowl on his face.  
  
"Does anyone wanna eat?"  
  
Patrick shook his head firmly, still staring at his useless handset.  
  
"How can you wanna eat, dude?" Joe snapped. "Your family might be dead."  
  
"No, Pete's right," Andy cut in. "We have no idea what's gonna happen - while we have the option, we should make sure we all get a decent meal."  
  
"I don't think I can," Patrick mumbled, rubbing under his glasses miserably.  
  
"You should try, though, okay? Besides, getting out of these four walls for a little while's probably better for all of us."  
  
Joe pressed his hands to his eyes. How could anyone fucking think food was even an issue, right now? "I'm not just gonna, like, sit around and chow down on chicken wings like this crap isn't happening. I can't fucking do that. Not until I know she's safe."  
  
"What if she isn't safe, bro?" Pete asked, off-handedly. "You never gonna eat again?"  
  
"Fucking maybe."  
  
He felt Patrick's hand bump his knee gently, a small gesture of concern and reprimand at once.  
  
"So, what're you gonna do, waste away? Don't be a dumbass."  
  
"Oh, fuck off."  
  
"Maybe we can just try?" Patrick suggested. "I don't know if I wanna get hungry later and have to walk across the desert to get food when I don't know what's out there, y'know?"  
  
The restaurant was wood panelled and jaunty skiffle was playing over the speakers as they half-heartedly studied menus filled with cutesy western puns. Around them, middle class families with young children chatted stiltedly with tense smiles, trying to pretend nothing was wrong, so as not to frighten the children. It was absurd. It made him want to yell at everyone, demand to know if they realised that something awful had happened, something that had changed all of them forever. But he didn't. He sat between Andy and Patrick, staring at the menu blankly until a twitchy teenager in a western shirt and a ketchup holster approached with a notebook and asked for their orders. His hands were shaking.  
  
At least he knew, Joe thought. Probably the only person on this ridiculous ranch with any concept that they were all fucked.  
  
Even in the apocalypse, Andy insisted on sticking to stringent moral codes that probably didn't mean anything, anymore. There was an irrationality to it that told him Andy was either in deep denial or had lost his mind entirely, clutching on to the old rules for comfort.  
  
The perfectly clear sky was turning a soft indigo with tiny sparks of white scattered across it, by the time they headed back to their room. Crickets hummed across the landscape, in the still, mild air. It was more like a soundstage than real life.  
  
Joe sat on the step at the edge of the patio, when they got back, abandoning his e-cigarette for a good old fashioned one from his emergency stash for when he forgot to charge it. Somehow, vapour wasn't cutting it. It was getting dark and the worry was intensifying, like a parent waiting for a child to come home past curfew. He'd tried calling her again, hanging up after the voicemail message ended, and there was still no answer.  
  
It was almost ten when Patrick came to the door, telling him that the president was going to make another address. Joe creaked to his feet, tossing the butt into the dirt, and followed him inside, feeling his heart pulsing at the base of his throat. He already knew what they were going to say, he just needed the confirmation. For everyone else to be told what he already knew.  
  
Andy was perched on a chair, close to the TV, hunched forward over his knees, watching intently as Obama walked up to the podium, a dark, grim expression on his face. Joe wrapped his arms around himself to counteract the trembling.  
  
"Ladies and gentlemen, citizens of the United States of America, I appreciate your patience in waiting for our opportunity to visit the locations affected by today's visitation.  
  
"We're now in a position to confirm that forces have entered around fifty of our major cities and urban areas, areas which, on a Monday morning, would ordinarily be hives of activity. What they found there was total desolation. No human beings - alive or deceased - were located in any of those communities.  
  
"Early evidence suggests that between fifty and seventy percent of the population of this country - most heavily impacting the east and west coasts - may no longer be located on this planet.  
  
"I cannot tell you, at this time, where those individuals have gone, and I cannot reassure you that they are safe. The assessment of our intelligence agencies is that they have been removed from their homes, workplaces and other areas, without consent. At this time, we have no clear indication of where they may now be held or why these abductions have happened. But, I assure you, every conceivable resource will be made available to assist us in answering those questions.  
  
"In the meantime, the National Guard will be supervising all areas affected. Those who attempt to loot or vandalise others' property will face the fullest penalties.  
  
"In the short-term, some areas may experience temporary energy blackouts as we work to distribute the resources available to us to areas of the greatest need. We are fortunate that many of our energy and communication distribution hubs are outside of the major population centres and therefore a proportion of our engineers remain in position. We will work with them to ensure that we can sustain power and telecommunications as consistently as possible.  
  
"Where necessary, pre-planned emergency protocols will be activated. This nation will continue to operate. Notable exceptions will include commercial air traffic, which is suspended effective immediately, to avoid any potential interference with our investigations.  
  
"There is no doubt that today's events took us, as a planet, by surprise. It is certain that for many, if not all of us, these events will be gravely upsetting. But we must stand together and maintain our hope and our confidence that we will receive answers and that every effort will be made to bring our people home."  
  
They all remained in frozen silence as the address ended. Watched the screen switch back to relatively unknown news anchors in an unfamiliar studio, because all the usual ones had been in Washington. Their faces were pale, pauses longer than was natural, all trying to remain calm and professional in the face of the news that they, too, had probably lost loved ones.  
  
There was nothing anyone could do. Nothing. It wasn't like they'd been abducted by terrorists in a foreign country - that they could make some kind of ill-advised rescue mission with a KLM flight and a briefcase of bribe money - they were powerless. All of them were powerless. Perhaps half the world's population had been taken and they didn't have anything like the technology to track them down. They were gone. Just gone.  
  
Beside him, Patrick turned away a little to rub at his eye with the underside of his wrist.  
  
"They've taken my kid," Pete announced flatly.  
  
"They've taken everyone," Andy told him, as official military footage of a completely barren downtown New York ran on the screen. Vehicles stopped in the middle of the street, some with doors open, not a single soul except those in fatigues patrolling Times Square. Similar scenes when they cut to LA - it was like the Marie Celeste, a McDonald's smoldering, whatever had been being cooked clearly caught and charred in the kitchen. Helicopter footage of the Golden Gate Bridge, vehicles stranded across its length.  
  
"Wait, what about home?" Patrick demanded of the TV, when they cut back to the studio without showing Chicago.  
  
None of them answered. They all knew. Chicago was going to be the same as everywhere else, but none of them could vocalise it. Chicago meant family - parents - the people who were supposed to be there at times like this, always. The people they still turned to when they didn't know what to do.  
  
Compelled by a sudden claustrophobia, Joe muttered, "Fucking told you so…" and pushed the patio door back open to stumble outside and look at the sky. It was dark now. Deepest navy blue, more stars than he'd ever seen, even in Chile. A great sweep of foggy white towards the centre of the galaxy. He turned and turned on the gritty lawn beyond the patio, gazing up into space, trying to see as far as he could, hoping for some hint, some sign that they were out there - where they were, how to get his wife home.  
  
The tiny flecks of satellites crisscrossed above him, Venus sitting bright above the black silhouettes of mountains in the west, like he could almost touch it. He'd never felt so small and useless. A helpless, upright ape trying to imagine where an advanced civilisation might live, in the great expanse of nothing.  
  
\---  
  
Patrick shut himself in the bathroom after the address, locking the door behind him and trying to control his breathing. Trying not to cry. But still a choked sob slipped out as he sat on the edge of the jacuzzi bath. His wife was gone and there was a sick feeling in his stomach, heavy and persistent. He didn't know what to do, where to begin. He'd always been waiting for something to go wrong, and now it had. Maybe it was his fault -  there'd been so much going on and his head hadn't been where it ought to, not for a long time, he'd longed for a way out of a situation he couldn't fix. Even though logic said it was ridiculous, there was still a little voice telling him he'd done this - he'd wished for something to take away the aching tension he'd been carrying for months, but he'd never really meant it. Not like this.  
  
A few hot, wet tracks slipped down his face, and he let them fall as he smothered a sob with his wedding ring pressed to his lips. He squeezed his eyes closed, imagining what she'd say if she could see him. She'd scold him for being dramatic, probably, tell him it wasn't helping.  
  
He smiled a little at the thought.  
  
By the time he opened the door, Pete was lying on the bed he'd share with Andy, frowning at the ceiling. The room was lit by the flickering blue of the TV screen and Joe was still outside.  
  
Silently, Patrick wound his way through the furniture to look out of the french doors, resting a hand on Andy's shoulder for a moment as he went, comfort for both of them. He could just make out the familiar silhouette, standing a few feet from the patio, gazing into the black. The bed creaked as he crawled on beside Pete.  
  
"You okay, Cookie?" Pete asked, his voice rough, like when he used to scream for hours while they recorded and it would be ragged for days after.  
  
"I mean… no, but…" he shrugged. _Hold it together, she'd hate it if you wussed out.  
  
_ Pete nodded against the arm folded under his head, as if he knew. Patrick was thankful for it - he didn't have it in him to talk out his feelings, right now. They were too messed up, too full of guilt and shame.  
  
"Is there anything new?"  
  
"Not really," Andy told him. "Same footage, a couple of eye witness accounts of the ships coming over… Nothing worth getting your hopes up over."  
  
"Oh. Did you try calling your mom? Or Matt, even?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Don't you wanna check in, or -?"  
  
"I tried earlier. If they could call, they would have, so I guess they can't."  
  
On the bed beside him, Pete rested a soothing hand on Patrick's back. _Don't push the issue.  
  
_ Not that he would, he just never understood Andy fully. Even after all these years. He'd never met a man as fiercely devoted to his mom, but he'd never known someone as able to shut down his feelings in order to get things done, either.  
  
"You owe Joe an apology," Patrick told Pete, absently, trying to see him outside the door, through the reflections in the glass. "I guess he was right all along."  
  
"He doesn't know anything. For all he knows, dude, what he heard could've been comms shutting down, or whatever."  
  
"He heard enough, y'know? Whether it was comms shutting down, or them taking her or her last breath, he heard the moment it happened."  
  
"We all saw it. It affects us all."  
  
"No, but - I mean, it's _Marie_ , y'know? I don't even know if he can function without her, anymore."  
  
"More than you need Elisa? More than I need Meagan, or Bronx, even?"  
  
Patrick huffed. He knew Pete knew what he meant. He'd been only too aware of how happy Joe was with her. The change in him, over the years, had been significant but when he'd moved to New York to be with her, she'd started to iron out all his foibles and the things that had made him hard to live with sometimes. He'd call her for a pep talk, on the bus, and she'd guide him away from the edge of a meltdown in a way few people had ever achieved. Patrick liked to think he was one of them, had been second only to Joe's mom, for a while. But he'd messed that up, and she'd filled the role, done better than he ever had - helped Joe resolve and manage his issues instead of just accommodating them and telling him they didn't make him strange.  
  
"This isn't a competition over who's gonna be the most fucked up by what just happened," Andy said, without looking away from the TV. "Just give him all the slack you've got. He doesn't do change well, you know that."  
  
"We're all gonna need each other," Patrick agreed, feeling a lump in his throat and swallowing it with a sniff. "I know I need you all, right now."  
  
Sighing, Pete sat up and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, bumping his forehead above Patrick's ear. "I got you, Lunchbox."  
  
"Thanks," Patrick smiled, strained. He wrapped his arm across Pete's back and patted before letting go. "I think I'm gonna check on him."  
  
He slid off the bed and opened the door to step outside, tucking his arms around himself as the air hit - it was a clear, bleakly beautiful night, and the hair on his forearms stood on end, goose pimples prickling. Joe was only wearing a t-shirt, he had to be frozen.  
  
"Can you see anything?" he asked, by way of announcing himself. It didn't seem like a good idea to creep up on him, today.  
  
Joe just shook his head, the loose curls falling in his face as he looked down to glance at him, glinting white in the light of a waning moon. The little crescent didn't shine too brightly and the Milky Way cast a sweeping downturned smile across the sky.  
  
"Do you know how many stars are in our galaxy, dude?" Joe asked quietly, eyes back to searching above them.  
  
"Not really. More than I think my brain could take, probably?"  
  
"The low estimate is 100 billion. The high estimate is 400 billion. That's, like, maybe 400 billion solar systems - and that's just in our galaxy… at least 400 billion places they could be, right now, and we don't even know where to start looking. We don't have a way to get there if we did. It'd take pretty much a year to get to fucking _Mars_..."  
  
"Well… maybe the government knows more than they're admitting? Maybe there's experimental technology or something - maybe even some kind of signal we can trace - ?"  
  
Joe just turned up his nose and shook his head. "Doubtful."  
  
"Yeah, but they got here, didn't they? They can't be so far away…"  
  
"We have _no idea_ what technology they have. They could be on the other side of the universe, and it wouldn't matter because we can't get outside our own orbit, yet. And wherever they are, they've taken… like… they've taken the love of my life, and I can't even tell her how much I…" his voice faltered and he closed his eyes and dropped his head. "Fuck."  
  
Trying not to grimace outwardly, Patrick shook his head and rubbed at Joe's back. "Dude, she knows. I heard you telling her when it happened, but she knew. Trust me - _everyone_ does. From the moment you started dating, we all did."  
  
"But, like, what am I gonna do, now? She was… she made me… I mean, you knew me before I met her. I was a fucking shambles, and, like..." He stopped and took a deep, juddering breath, but didn't finish.  
  
"You're still a shambles, and we wouldn't want you any other way... But we're gonna take care of each other, right? All of us are a little messed up in our own way - I mean, I think Andy's in denial, and _Pete_ … I'm pretty sure he's just jealous they didn't take him, because it's all he's ever wanted. But it's like I told them both, I need you all, right now, y'know? We might be all each other has, so don't fall apart on me, okay?"  
  
Joe nodded, choked. "I'm sorry, man… I do get that everyone lost people, but… she's just…"  
  
"I know." Patrick leaned a little closer, to rest his shoulder against Joe's and was grateful for the companionable arm that tucked over him and the feel of his body heat. They stood together watching the sky for a couple of long minutes, holding on to each other for dear life. It was grounding. For a little while he was a young, naive kid again, alone in a strange town on summer break, secure in the knowledge that Joe wouldn't abandon him like the others did. He'd be forever grateful for that, though he didn't always feel like he'd shown it enough. It wasn't so long ago that Joe was barely speaking to him, and he'd hardly noticed for two years. He'd just assumed things were alright, because it was Joe and Joe had always been there; Joe who rolled with the big punches until they knocked him cold but lost his shit about the minutiae. Ever since the moment he'd realised how badly wrong everything had gone, he'd been trying to make up lost ground and no matter how fine Joe insisted they were, Patrick could never quite believe him.  
  
There had been a lot of long talks in the last year. A lot of sitting in studios after everyone had left, unpicking their mistakes and really getting to understand each other like they hadn't in a long time. They'd started hanging out together a lot more, until Elisa started joking that he went on more dates with Joe than he did with her. They were closer than they'd ever been - even more than when they were kids - back in a place where they shared more in common than they did with the other two, for the first time since they were eighteen or so.  
  
And now there was something else - something sudden and devastating and too enormous to fully process, yet. It was selfish to be relieved that Joe had maybe lost the woman he loved, but to Patrick's shame, he was.  
  
When they finally went back inside, Andy had moved to the bed, beside Pete. They were watching the TV in silence, the same footage on a different channel.  
  
"We should sleep," he told them, kicking off his boots, already unlaced, at the bottom of the bed. "We don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow.  
  
"Maybe they'll come back for the rest of us," Pete shrugged.  
  
From behind the bathroom door, Joe called, "I hope so!"  
  
"Because you're totally gonna find each other amongst seven billion people," Andy muttered back, absently, hopping channels.  
  
"Do we have any kind of plan?"  
  
"Obviously, we head back to LA," Pete shrugged. "It's the nearest place and we all have homes and stuff there."  
  
Andy frowned at him. "No, we don't."  
  
"Well… okay, but you can just live with me, kind of."  
  
"Who said I want to live with you? I have my own home!"  
  
"Yeah, but if you're not gonna want to go back there if all your Fuck City dudes are gone, right?"  
  
Patrick climbed onto the other bed and sat looking at them with his legs folded. "Can we just go home?"  
  
"Home like Chicago?" Pete asked.  
  
"Yeah. Home like Chicago. I mean, that's where all our family is, right? Or, near enough. And I didn't see it on TV, yet…"  
  
"Nobody's family's there, anymore. It's our second biggest city, if they wanted people, they wouldn't have skipped it."  
  
"Maybe, but I just… I just really wanna go home, y'know?"  
  
The bathroom door opened and Joe reappeared, still drying his hands. "I want to go home, too. From there I can get to New York, anyway. And Andy can, like, get up to Milwaukee."  
  
"It seems like a good idea… I mean, if we're going back to figure things out, summer has to be the best time, right?"  
  
"You say that like you think it's gonna take six months to get home! We could be there by Wednesday morning if we took shifts driving, or whatever."  
  
Andy shrugged. "Patrick has a point - we need to check on everyone and then make a decision. Logically, Chicago's a good place to start. We can go there, go back to my mom's, maybe over to New York…"  
  
"What about LA? Dude, I have a kid to think of, your parents can take care of themselves!"  
  
"If Ashlee's been taken, so has he. If Ashlee hasn't, he'd be safe with her."  
  
"But at least California isn't cold, ever!"  
  
"It also has a drought. You can't survive on sand, Pete."  
  
"Look, the dude just said they'll keep amenities running -"  
  
"For how long? What do you think'll happen when shit starts to run out? The infrastructure isn't going to be there. All the world's banking systems are centred in major cities. There may as well have been a solar blowout that sent all our IT systems down, it's only a matter of time. Trust me, we should do what we need to now, when we at least _stand a chance_. My house is purposely prepared for this!"  
  
By the time they'd argued through every option and woven their way back to 'Let's just go home', Patrick was exhausted. He'd kicked off his jeans and dumped his shirt as a pointed message to tell them he was ready for bed, but only Joe understood. Andy had ended the argument by turning the volume on the TV up and ignoring Pete until he stomped off to sit on a fence outside.  
  
Patrick curled up on his side and wrapped his fingers around Joe's bicep while he gazed through the ceiling as if visualising the sky beyond it, just for the reassurance that he was there; glad to feel a momentary pat on the hip of acknowledgement before he slipped into a fitful sleep.  
  
\---  
  
It wasn't that Pete was afraid of the dark, it was just that the dark was isolating. He felt it like a moth to flame - he couldn't put down his phone for long before he was picking it up again and staring into the blue light of the screen.  
  
He wanted to know that someone was out there.  
  
The others laughed about the fact he kept all notifications on his social media switched on, even once his followers passed a million. Meagan had found it infuriating at first, but she'd come round. She realised before he did that he needed to know that someone was thinking of him, always. That in the middle of the night the soft _fwips_ and _pings_ reminded him that someone was there. It didn't matter whether they were affectionate jibes from crew buddies on the other side of the planet, sending in jokes and insta shots of vaguely offensive street art, or twelve year olds with emojis, begging him to wish his own friends happy birthday, as if he hadn't already done so privately. They were still there; sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands in a day.  
  
It seemed that Twitter was down for hours, nothing sending, nothing received. Maybe it was the government trying to avoid hysteria and disinformation, or maybe everyone outside this baked, barren valley was truly gone.  
  
He drafted and re-wrote his message to the world a handful of times before pressing send, hoping against hope that he wasn't tweeting into a void, sickly afraid that they were all that was left.  
  
_Spinning out of control on this little rock. Give me a sign.  
_

There was nothing for a few minutes, an unearthly silence - and then the replies came, one after the other. His own face, or his friends', peering back at him from the userpics of accounts with names like  **p3t3w3nt2** and  **brend0nsleatherp4nts** . _  
  
_ _ OMG ur not dead!! _

_ pETE? _

_ Where are you? ILY.  _

_ Pete my mom wont anser the phone she went to work yesterday _

_ Fuck, Wentz, this better not be promo for the album.  _ _ #overkill _

_ IM CRYING I LOVE YOU  _

_ Is Patrick ok?? _

_ I'm so happy you tweeted!!! iF they took u I'd kms.  _

He had a general policy not to respond to tweets, but tonight he meticulously worked his way through and liked each one. A little WOW! signal from him to the kids, as he tried to ignore the fact that no one he knew had replied.  
  
Afterwards, he pulled up his Snapchat and took a selfie across the room, listening to Joe grumble and sit up a little from behind Patrick.  
  
"The fuck are you doing?" he asked, groggily, laying back down and falling asleep before Pete could respond.  
  
Pete posted the photo of the side of his face pressed into the pillow, with three indistinct but recognisable forms in the background, and the caption: _Are we the lucky ones or the lost souls?  
  
_ It soothed him to know they weren't alone, in the same way it soothed the frightened kids around the world, seeing his name finally appear on their feeds like an old friend. A familiar face in the bleakness of the sudden silence.  
  
Finally, he texted Ashlee, knowing there wouldn't be a response. He'd tried and tried all day; felt his forehead aching from the tension and the ceaseless frowning as he waited for the personalised notification tone that never came.  
  
_Kiss B goodnight from me. Tell him I'm looking at the same stars. x  
  
_ When he finally fell asleep, it was with a picture of Bronx on the screen, resting in a hand that sank to his chest as he drifted off.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2  
**_But I think our lifelines became too intertwined, and now we've paid the price.  
  
  
  
_ Andy was awake at sunrise. Part restlessness, part routine. Pete had been equally restless all night, tossing and turning on the mattress beside him, sitting up in the dark to tap away on his phone, until exhaustion got the better of him too.  
  
He left them all asleep and went outside, watching a golden sun rise over the distant mountains. It was warmer, more beautiful than he could ever remember seeing it, like a bright new future dawning after a terrible storm.  
  
The thing was, he'd been waiting for something like this. For the world to go wrong, somehow, to lose its momentum and have to start again. But what he'd expected was a solar flare - something universally catastrophic, that would take down every founding element of modern society: technology, utilities, banking, communications, travel systems… The things they relied on, day to day.  
  
He hadn't expected it to take the people he relied on day to day, too. His mom. His best friend. And he knew they were gone, deep down. He knew there was no hope, that they'd never see any of them again, but he wasn't ready to fully confront it. He'd set it aside, to get used to the situation and the strange, changed world around them before he faced the catastrophic personal reality that most of the people he loved the most were, in effect, dead.  
  
For years, he and Matt had mused on the eventual apocalypse - sitting through marathon sessions of The Walking Dead, theorising on how they'd handle it, what they'd do and how it would feel to see loved ones turn, have to issue the headshot to end the misery.  
  
_You just gotta do it, man - if I'm gone, I'm gone, no remorse. Just_ bam! _and out. But watch the face, yeah?"  
  
_ He'd always promised that he'd do it, no question, no hesitation, telling him there was nothing about his face worth saving, anyway.  
  
Now, starting his stretches on the thin, cultivated grass outside the room, he wished he'd had that chance, because somehow, having nothing was worse.  
  
When the others woke, he insisted on showers and breakfast before letting them leave. They had a long, long journey ahead of them and when they got 'home' there wouldn't be anyone waiting for them. No parents to fuss about whether they were eating enough or tut at their clothes, no one who'd have missed them, shared in their fears, or would sit with them long into the night and talk in mind-blown undertones about what exactly had just fucking happened.  
  
The fact was, he knew they all needed to go home, to see it for real - to have it confirmed that everything they knew was gone - but he wasn't sure they were ready to deal with that truth. He wasn't sure he was. But it was the only way to face the reality and find a way to move on.  
  
Pete was still sulking, insisting that it was insanity to head back past Vegas when LA was four hours away, even though they'd all seen the footage of abandoned vehicles clogging the freeways, leaving them impassable. He slumped shotgun with his feet on the dash, plugging his phone into the in-car charger as if he could get signal in the middle of the desert.  
  
In back, Patrick was quiet; unsettlingly stoic about the fact that his wife had essentially ceased to exist. It wasn't normal. Patrick didn't wear his heart on his sleeve, like Pete, he had it emblazoned across his sweater. If he was mad, everyone knew. If he was miserable, everyone knew. And this wasn't how he did miserable - Patrick's miserable was dark, self-deprecating humour and little outbursts at the injustice he was feeling. This was droid-like, nothing was wrong, they were just getting in the car to head to the studio on an average day.  
  
Andy caught Joe's eye in the rearview as he put on his sunglasses. Even once he could no longer see his friend's eyes, he knew Joe was looking back at him, blinking slowly; morosely. He wanted to be alone, he could see it all over Joe's face but he could have guessed that anyway, after nearly fifteen years. This should have been his holed-away processing time; instead he was trapped in a car, in unbearable heat, with none of his familiar outlets and Pete being petulant. It was only a matter of time before the fighting started.  
  
All Andy could do was floor the pedal and hope they could hold out until the empty streets of Las Vegas provided a diversion.  
  
\---  
  
"Hey, there's a car!" Pete cheered, sitting himself up and leaning out the window to wave at the vehicle speeding the other way along the highway, away from the city. It was the first sign of life they'd encountered since leaving the resort and it gave him hope. People were out here! They were so close to Vegas, now, and if there were people here, there had to be people in other cities.  
  
But it was only a few minutes later, as they realised that they'd passed within the city limits and there was no one else, that he began to feel sick.  
  
"This is eerie," Patrick said, shifting in his seat to stare directly out the window at the sudden smattering of abandoned vehicles stilled on the road. A few were rear-ended where drivers must have been taken before they could stop.  
  
They slowed to a crawl, dodging empty cars with open doors, weaving their way through the remnants of the Monday morning traffic.  
  
"That car had no wheels…"  
  
Andy gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. "Someone didn't get the message about not looting, I guess."  
  
Almost reflexively, Pete lifted his phone and snapped a picture, then flipped into Snapchat to film the scene, instead.  
  
"Welcome to the set of the first apocalyptic reality show…"  
  
"That's fucked up," Joe muttered, kicking the back of Pete's seat. "Don't post shit like that…"  
  
"Dark humour is a coping mechanism."  
  
"How do you know that, like, some kid won't see their dad's car all trashed because you posted it, or someone shared it or whatever?"  
  
"Because there's nobody left, dude. Take a fucking look."  
  
Joe's silence spoke validating volumes. Las Vegas was empty. Even skirting along the northern highways, that was obvious. It spoke terrifyingly of the breadth of the devastation. Even here, passing through the outer suburbs, it seemed that nobody had been safe.  
  
\---  
  
The desert was a bleak place to be on an ordinary day, but it was desolate, this morning. It reminded Joe of a moonscape, virtually barren and lifeless. Nothing but a million acres of sky meeting dust. Nothing living.  
  
Vegas had been sobering for all of them. They'd driven in total silence for a couple of hours, afterward, heading north through Utah until Pete demanded a toilet break. He'd offered to drive next shift, too, but they'd all refused - none of them believed for a second that if they did, they wouldn't wake up back in LA "for their own good." When they were far enough away that he knew it was impossible, then Pete could drive; until then, it was Patrick who climbed into the driving seat and Joe sitting beside him, in control of the stereo.  
  
There wasn't much to listen to, in the middle of nowhere, patchy coverage and too much talk radio. All anyone seemed to want to do was talk about it, and Joe didn't. He didn't want to talk about it or listen to people talk about it. Their stupid theories and hyperbole were maddening.  
  
He put on some Bowie, instead, carefully avoiding _Space Oddity_. Patrick's hands were tight on the wheel; he'd been quiet all day, his face inscrutable as they sat together, watching the nothingness pass in the stifling heat. In the night, he'd woken to Patrick's voice, the words inaudible but the tone clear - tight and high and urgent - his hands grasping out for something. He'd done what he used to do back when they were kids, when they were penniless and trying to tour in a terrifying death trap of a van: rubbed soothingly at his side, whispering platitudes until whatever anxiety was plaguing his dreams faded away again.  
  
It had been a stark and jarring reminder of how things once were and how far from there they'd come. A year ago, he hadn't believed they'd ever be real friends again. All of those memories of summer nights had seemed naively rose tinted, meaningless in the wake of how dramatically it had fallen apart. They'd made a lot of promises to each other in those days - all of them - and one by one, they'd all been broken or renegotiated or forgotten. They'd taken each other for granted, made assumptions that everything was okay because it had been okay before, and it wasn't. Not for Joe and not for anyone, really. But he'd been too stupid, had too little confidence to fight his own corner or even make it clear where his corner was.  
  
He'd thought the world as he knew it had ended back then, but the world as he knew it a decade ago was suddenly far closer to the reality he found himself in.  
  
He almost wished the intervening ten years had never happened. He felt empty and numb right now, but he knew the rest was coming - when he got home to his parents' house and found the family photos on the mantle and the walls and the shelves... He'd only really brushed against grief, in the past - old school friends, one he'd lost touch with in middle school, one he'd watched lose himself from a distance; a great aunt whose time had come. He wanted to be home, to surround himself with their things, but he wasn't ready for the wave to hit, the realisation that everyone he loved was simply gone. No logic, no sense that they'd suffered and were at peace, now, they just weren't there anymore. For all he knew, they were being harvested for food, tortured while the others watched - and he was alone, unable to stop it.  
  
The landscape around them had changed as they passed into Utah. In the distance a black ridge faded to green as they grew closer, mountains rising from the ground until they were driving through a rocky pass with a river beneath them and sheer faces of stone on each side of them. They'd almost stopped at St. George, a little town on a plain under the mountains, but as they reached it, they realised that this, too, was abandoned. An intersection off the highway was backed up with traffic and as they pulled into the exit lane and waited, it became obvious that all of the vehicles were empty. Andy pulled them back on the interstate and they gazed down onto the road below them as they crawled across an overpass. On the right, was what looked like a strip mall burned out from one end, where the remnants of an Outback Steakhouse and a Mongolian BBQ stood ironically blackened and charred.  
  
"Is it wrong that seeing that just makes me hungry?" Pete asked, staring out of the window. Joe spluttered a laugh before he could remember that nothing was funny, anymore. The darkness of the humour was a relief in the blindingly bright summer sun, as they picked up speed and left the town behind them. For the first time, he felt his chest unclench a little. It was impossible to be optimistic, but it was a relief to be away from the desert - where he'd seen them pass overhead, where they were exposed, a trail of dust thrown up by the wheels. At least in the mountains there was life, greenery, it felt like they were moving forwards, at last, not trapped on a treadmill.  
  
They stopped for more gas in a small cluster of buildings further up the interstate. A fragile looking woman at the counter tried hard to smile at them as Patrick paid for fuel and bottled water, reflexively wishing them a 'nice day' and flinching at her mistake. It'd be a long time before any of them would have a nice day again.  
  
"What do you think we'll do, when we get back?" Patrick asked, sometime in late afternoon, when Pete's head had lolled back against his headrest and Andy's eyes were lightly closed in sleep or meditation.  
  
"I don't know, man." He shrugged, looking over at Patrick's face as he focused on the curving highway ahead of them. He was a little dark under the eyes, blinking slowly behind his glasses. His shirt was damp with sweat at the neck and under his arms.  
  
"Would you… I mean, I don't want to go to my mom's alone, y'know?"  
  
Joe nodded. "Yeah."  
  
"And I mean, if you need company…"  
  
"Okay." He watched Patrick rubbing his eye and sighing deeply. "You know, you seem kinda tired, you want me to take over?"  
  
"I'm fine."  
  
"You've been driving for nearly four hours and you didn't exactly, like, sleep well last night or anything…"  
  
For a moment, Patrick hesitated, glancing at him awkwardly. "I slept fine."  
  
"You were crying out."  
  
Patrick's fingers curled and re-curled on the wheel. "What was I saying?"  
  
"Honestly, I couldn't tell, but you seemed pretty shook up... I just kind of like, talked to you until you calmed down."  
  
"Like you used to," Patrick said, his cheeks colouring slightly, trying for a small smile that came out heavy and too quick.  
  
"Pretty much."  
  
"I'm sorry. If I disturbed you, I mean…"  
  
"It's fine, dude, I just kind of assumed you were having a nightmare about what happened. Yesterday was pretty fucked up..."  
  
He watched Patrick's tongue flick out over his bottom lip and pull it between his teeth; his eyebrows dipped as he nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's what it was…"  
  
"So… you want me to take over so you can, like, rest?"  
  
"No, I mean, you probably didn't sleep so great, either, thanks to me."  
  
Joe shrugged and felt a churn in his stomach as he said, "I slept better than I would have."  
  
Patrick's expression hardly flickered. "Alright, at the next rest stop, maybe. We're gonna need gas again, in a while."  
  
"Sure."  
  
They drove on, watching the red stone tower higher and higher above them, quiet against the soundtrack of Tom Waits that Patrick had asked him to put on because Prince was all wrong for the situation.  
  
The next gas station they found was closed, its pumps switched off and the door shuttered. There wasn't even a bathroom they could access. So, Joe switched to driving while Patrick climbed into the passenger seat and they carried on, speaking in tensely optimistic tones about how there would surely be a gas station open at the next small town, that there _must_ be somewhere. But there wasn't. The next place - no more than a hundred or so houses - was also a ghost town.  
  
And then the gas light came on.  
  
"Okay, we're basically on fumes, right now," Joe announced, feeling his jaw tighten and his voice coming out a little higher than usual.  
  
"Pete, how long can this global warming machine run on fumes?"  
  
"Uh…" Pete started, "well, taking into account the load, and the fact we're travelling on like, an incline, and everything… I'd say something like _I live in fucking LA where we have actual gas stations - how the fuck would I know?!_ "  
  
"Well, like, you don't know how to maintain the fucking aircon, so I guess that was a big thing to ask," Joe snapped back, ignoring the fact that he didn't know how to maintain the aircon in his own car, either. He really, really didn't have the patience for this, right now. They were about to run out of gas on a highway in the mountains, with nothing but protein bars and casino clothes and probably no phone signal at all, and Pete's fucking sarcasm was extremely close to getting him choked until he passed out. He could have been home, by now. He could have been home when it happened, and not in the middle of fucking Death Valley.  
  
"Don't fight, guys, c'mon - I hate it when you guys get into it. It's pretty much the last thing we need, right now, y'know?"  
  
"Well, all we can do is keep driving until we stop, kind of. Get as far as we can."  
  
"Like in a tunnel? Sure. Neat idea, Pete." They'd travelled mountain roads on tour and the tunnels under mountains had always freaked him out.  
  
"Well, what's your best fucking idea?"  
  
Joe huffed, irritably. "We wouldn't even be here, of it wasn't for your stupid fucking ideas…"  
  
"No, you'd be wherever the fuck everybody else is!"  
  
"Yeah, I fucking would! I'd be with my wife, and my family, Pete! That's where I'd be. But like, look where I actually am: in the middle of Colorado, with no gas and basically nothing left to live for!"  
  
Pete sank back into his seat and pulled his feet up, his semi-permanent scowl deepening.  
  
In the front, Joe felt Patrick's hand settle on his thigh for a moment, and then disappear. Andy said nothing, just chewed on his thumb, pensively.  
  
They drove on in silence until Joe pulled them into a rest stop, little more than a picnic point with restrooms.  
  
"What're you doing?" Pete asked, sitting up and looking around them. "Dude, there's nothing here!"  
  
"We're about to run out of gas. It's gonna be dark in, like, a couple of hours. Maybe we should just stop. Maybe tomorrow things will pick up or something, I don't know. But if we're gonna stop someplace, I'd prefer it's not directly on the highway and has restrooms, basically."  
  
Andy shrugged and rubbed his forehead with his knuckles. "It's the least worst option."  
  
"The least worst option was going back to LA."  
  
Patrick turned heavily in his seat, snapping, "Well, we're not going back to LA, so, right now, that doesn't fucking matter, okay?"  
  
Sighing, Andy asked, "How far back was the last town ?"  
  
"I don't know? Five miles, maybe? But it was closed…"  
  
"Fine. That's walkable," he groaned, opening his door and starting to get out. "Maybe I can find someone who's got access or something. I'll be back in a couple of hours."  
  
"What the fuck? Are you crazy?" Pete demanded, grabbing his shirt and pulling him back in. "There are bears out here, mountain lions - you go wandering around on your own, you're gonna get eaten or something."  
  
"Thanks, Pete, I hadn't considered those bears driving semis down the interstate, looking for snacks."  
  
Joe frowned at the steering wheel and then slumped to rest his forehead on his arms. "This fucking sucks."  
  
"I'm really sorry, dude," Patrick sighed, reaching out and running a hand over his shoulder apologetically, rubbing at the tension under his t-shirt. "I should've stopped sooner..."  
  
"Like where, dude?"  
  
"Look, I can walk back, get us a jerry can - then we can get to the next gas station and fill up, it's no big deal. I just wanna get home, right now, so I'll do whatever we need."  
  
Patrick turned back again and looked at him in the rear seat. "Andy, I really don't feel so good about letting you out there on your own, right now. Like, I appreciate the offer, y'know? But maybe we ought to wait and see if anyone's passing who can give us a ride into town or something."  
  
"We haven't seen anyone on this road in hours."  
  
"And I don't even remember seeing anyone _near_ that gas station - you could walk all the way back there, and find out it's like that place in Utah."  
  
"Maybe we can like, camp out, kind of?" Pete suggested. "Figure something out tomorrow, or whatever."  
  
"Oh, did you bring the tent?" Patrick's voice sing-songed with the sweet sarcasm he reserved for Pete.  
  
"We can sleep in the car! The whole back seat flats out, the front seats go most of the way back… Do you have any better ideas, right now? It's gonna be dark in two hours. We don't even know where we can get gas. At least I'm trying to think of something!"  
  
"I'm sorry, I just wanna get home..."  
  
"Then you should've stopped for some goddamn gas."  
  
"Where?" Joe demanded, without lifting his head. "Every place we've seen for the past two hours has been deserted. They even stripped that tiny fucking town back there."  
  
"Maybe they're didn't - maybe it's not deserted," Andy suggested, "but people are afraid and hiding in their homes. We found that gas station in Utah, there has to be more. So, maybe we stay here tonight, quit fucking bickering, and walk back in the morning to see if we can't get some gas. If the place is truly deserted, maybe we can get some and leave payment someplace."  
  
"The pumps were off, we tried them," Joe muttered.  
  
"Then we'll have to get inside and switch them back on. In the circumstances, I feel like people would understand."  
  
"Or maybe they'll fucking shoot us."  
  
Once they'd agreed to stay the night, as if they had a choice, Joe sat himself on one of the picnic tables, feet propped on the bench, gazing up at the steep, wooded cliffs surrounding them and trying to force himself to eat a protein bar and a packet of chips. It was the first thing he'd tried to eat since Andy had forced them to sit down and eat breakfast back at the resort, twelve hours ago. Joe had filled his plate with meat to spite him and then made himself eat all of it. His stomach, ever temperamental, hadn't thanked him.  
  
Patrick made his way over and climbed up onto the table with his hands still in his pockets.  
  
"It's pretty, isn't it?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"If it wasn't for the fact nobody else is here…"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
They sat and listened to the roaring of the river behind them, the calls of birds in the hills, and Joe offered him his bag of chips, to a shake of the head.  
  
"I don't really have an appetite, right now, y'know?"  
  
"Me either, actually."  
  
"It feels weird to try to do normal stuff, like eat, when nothing's normal, right now."  
  
Joe lifted his head from the bottom of the foil bag to look at him. He was gazing off into the distance, high into the mountains or the sky just above them. Patrick not wanting to eat was unusual; it was one of his comforts. That's how Joe knew he was so happy to be working on his own projects, he wasn't compensating for not feeling good with sugar. It had hurt, in a way, when he saw the first photos of him - this changed person, an apparently happier, healthier one, had appeared when Joe was out of his life. Did that mean Joe somehow made him miserable? He was already starting to fill out a little since they worked things out - and honestly, Joe was glad, because he'd started to look too thin, almost ill - but he wasn't sure what it implied. The weird bleach job and his naturally pale skin had made him look like a ghost. So much so, that when Pete made him see one of Patrick's shows, he'd gone almost willingly, wanting a chance to check up on him without having to visit and pretend everything was fine.  
  
Even though Patrick had hurt him, he'd still cared and wanted to look out for him, and he'd been a little mad at himself for that. Felt like the same fool who'd made a lot of mistakes over Patrick, when they were kids.  
  
Having his heart broken by the same person twice, in different ways at seventeen and twenty-three, had shaped a lot of the way he dealt with other people at nearly twenty-nine. But never Patrick. Even when he tried to cut him out, he couldn't. When he tried to stand his ground and refuse to put himself in a situation where he could be hurt again, all it took was Patrick telling him he was struggling and his resolve crumbled. He'd always looked out for him; he'd been the one who drove him to the hospital when Pete almost caved his head in on stage, one time, he'd been the one to guide him away from shady people being suspiciously friendly in strange towns, because Patrick was trusting and naive.  
  
He'd seen the look on Marie's face as she brought him another cup of coffee at midnight, left it on the phone table next to him and stroked his face tenderly, as he agreed to try to work on something; smiling encouragingly, but tense. When he'd come to bed, over an hour later, she'd still been awake, waiting in the dark. She knew, even if he hadn't, that he was going back to Patrick and the band.  
  
Compulsively, Joe pulled out his phone and scrolled through his photo album, wishing he'd taken more photos of her, instead of taking them of stupid, inanimate things that never mattered, but she didn't enjoy being photographed - had no idea how beautiful she was or that he really wanted to show her to everyone on his Instagram because he was proud.  
  
"Missing her?" Patrick asked, looking back at Joe with a half-hearted, down-turned grin.  
  
"Yeah," he nodded, "I don't wanna forget what her smile looks like."  
  
Patrick nodded back, pensively, and turned to look at the fractured mess of a phone he'd pulled out of his pocket. "I kind of don't have that luxury, because I'm an idiot."  
  
"You're not an idiot, dude, you were just freaking out… I mean, I tried to like, beat up Pete's car."  
  
"I make mistakes, Joe. I do this all the time - I lose my temper and I do things and I don't think of the consequences. I'm worse than Pete."  
  
Joe shifted a little, to place them thigh to thigh, and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling Patrick to him. "Nobody's worse than Pete. He has, like, two modes: criminal mastermind and village idiot."  
  
Patrick snorted with laughter and leaned in to rest his head on Joe's shoulder. As they sat, Joe wracked his brain to think if he had any photos of Elisa on his phone. It was unlikely, he didn't generally take pictures of other women, but he made a mental note to check, in case he had something from a social event. He definitely didn't have any of her with Patrick.  
  
"Y'know, I could do with stretching my legs a little," Patrick said, after a few minutes.  
  
Tipping the remnants of his chips on to the grass for the wildlife, he stuffed the empty packet in his pocket and stood up to stretch. "Okay."  
  
There was a path running along the river, which turned into a boardwalk and viewing point a little further down. It formed part of the trailhead up into the mountains, according to the engraved wooden signs by the washrooms. They wandered together, not speaking. It was comforting to have Patrick there. If this had to happen, he was relieved to have them with him - even Pete - but it was Patrick that mattered most. He'd promised, when they started speaking again after years of alienation and Joe nursing his wounds through other projects, that he'd never let Joe down again. And so far he hadn't, but he over compensated constantly, like he was desperate to convince him he meant it. Joe didn't need convincing, not anymore. They'd talked so long about everything, it felt almost like they had nothing more to reveal to each other - there was nothing to be embarrassed about telling each other, because they knew virtually everything else.  
  
"Are you doing okay?"  
  
Joe blinked, surprised by the sudden interruption. "I guess that depends how you define 'okay'."  
  
"Well… as okay as you can be?"  
  
"Are _you_? You've been a little… I don't know. Normal."  
  
Patrick laughed flatly. "What am I supposed to do, Joe? Just curl up in the backseat and cry?"  
  
"No, but - "  
  
"You're holding it together."  
  
"Barely." He felt Patrick's gaze on the side of his face and stopped. "I don't know what I'm supposed to feel, other than shitty, right now. She's gone, but she didn't die. I don't have a body to bury and I don't know if I'll ever see her again - or my mom, or my dad, or Sam. So, what do I do, Ric? Do I grieve? Do I just, like, give up on everybody?" He'd opened the floodgates, now, and he could feel a lump in this throat and his eyes beginning to sting. "I miss her and it's only been a _day_. I keep expecting her to text me and then I remember she won't. I want to kind of like, call my mom and tell her everything that happened, but I can't - I've tried and she doesn't answer. For the first time in my life, she's not there and I don't know what to do. And I'm not sort of looking for a rope, right now, but I don't know if life is gonna be worth living when we get home, anyway. So, I'm kind of holding it together, but not really."  
  
Patrick closed his eyes and pushed a hand into his hair. "I'm sorry."  
  
"For what? It's not even your fault…"  
  
"I don't know? Pushing the issue. Nothing really feels real to me, right now, y'know? All I feel is guilty."  
  
"Guilty? Why - "  
  
"Like I shouldn't still be here. Like I escaped and they didn't. Like, in a way, this _is_ my fault."  
  
"That's just luck, dude… you couldn't have changed that."  
  
A light wisp of a breeze rustled through the trees - the first one he'd felt in days - and it flicked the sandy strands of Patrick's hair. "You don't know - I mean, maybe, but… they could have had me instead of her, or - or your mom, or someone, y'know? But good people - people way better and more valuable than me - they're all gone."  
  
"You can't think like that."  
  
"I can't help it."  
  
Joe's hand lifted itself to Patrick's shoulder and squeezed, thumb running soothingly over the curve of his neck, where his loose collar was sagging away. "I'm glad you're still here."  
  
"Yeah?" Patrick asked, his eyes wide and searching and mint green in the light.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"I, uh… I'm glad you're with me, too, y'know? You - I mean, we've been through kind of a lot and you mean the world to me, dude, and I hate seeing you hurting, but I'm glad they didn't take you, too. Promise me that we'll stick together?"  
  
Confused, Joe nodded. "Of course we'll stick together… Why wouldn't we?"  
  
"I don't know - I just… I know I messed up, in the past, and it's not so long ago you pretty much hated me, so…"  
  
He sighed, shaking his head a little. "I didn't hate you… We've talked this out already, dude. I was hurt and pissed off, but I've never hated you, not even when - " he cut himself off, stopping short of referencing things they never talked about, and covered his stumble. "Not even when things first went wrong."  
  
"You should have, I behaved like an asshole."  
  
"Yeah, sometimes," he shrugged, looking off over Patrick's shoulder, so he didn't catch his eye. "But you've always been my lil' dude, and I forgave you months ago. It's not like you were _trying_ to be a dick, you just… fucked up."  
  
Exhaling tiredly, Patrick nodded and leaned nearer to be pulled into a hug, which Joe carefully did, tucking both arms over Patrick's and burying his nose in his hair. They did this far more now than they used to. Maybe it was because the things that had happened between them were so long ago, now, or maybe it was because they were just older, more mature - more able to keep things compartmentalised. Either way, since they'd gotten back in contact, it had come naturally and it was comforting in a way hugging Andy or Pete, or any of their close friends, simply wasn't. Nobody felt warm like Patrick, or as real. Nobody felt as alive, made Joe feel that way.  
  
It used to be the same way, when they were kids. The first tour they ever did together had been a mess of teenage hormones and confined spaces, hours of being left alone together in the night, half-undressed from the heat in the back of the van. The air had been stifling but the experience had been liberating. They'd talked more than any teenage boys ordinarily would, trusted each other with things they'd be ashamed or too embarrassed to tell the others about. Boundaries had gotten blurred, things had become too familiar, too comfortable, they'd done things together that friends weren't supposed to - but they'd trusted each other, Joe had trusted Patrick, then, more than anyone he knew.  
  
"Oh. Am I interrupting, kind of?"  
  
"No," Patrick said, detaching himself quickly and stepping away, starting towards the end of the boardwalk where Pete was standing. He hadn't been interrupting now, but he had in the past, and every time he caught them talking or hanging out or standing in the same room alone, he made a point of reminding them of it.  
  
"Hurley wants us to collect some wood for a campfire in the parking lot."  
  
"I'm pretty sure that'll be illegal around here, but sure - the world's ending, why not?"  
  
Joe remained where he was as Patrick disappeared after Pete, paused for a moment to look around at the water and dense banks of conifers sweeping up the mountain, quietly grateful for a few minutes to himself. They'd been in the car for twelve hours almost straight, even without traffic. Sitting there with nothing but thoughts and the landscape was tiring on an emotional level. All of this would go unchanged without them. It would continue to flow and grow, and sway in the light canyon breeze. For them, nothing would be the same again, but for the trees, for the birds he could hear singing, everything was as it ever was.  
  
\---  
  
"That looked kinda cosy," Pete noted, glancing over his shoulder as Patrick reached him and they started along the fork in the trail to where it quickly became wooded.  
  
"Leave it alone," he warned him. This wasn't the time to get into the conversation Pete was trying to start.  
  
"I'm just saying - "  
  
"Well don't, Pete. Not today, okay?"  
  
"I'm not an idiot, by the way," Pete told him, stooping to pick up a dry stick as they passed.  
  
"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm pretty sure you know, dude."  
  
"Seriously, _what_?"  
  
"I mean, this turned out pretty well for you, right? Now you can have him and nobody gets hurt."  
  
"Nobody gets hurt?" Patrick hissed back, looking over his shoulder again, to check Joe wasn't following them. Too outraged to deny what Pete was implying. " _Nobody gets hurt_? Are you fucking kidding me?"  
  
"So, I'm right. I fucking knew something was up with you two."  
  
"There is no 'us two.'"  
  
"That's crap. You think I didn't notice the last six months I'm sidelined so you can cosy up with your old flame, kind of? Did Elisa figure it out, too? Is that why you guys were fighting?"  
  
"I wasn't - we weren't 'fighting', we just had a fight that one time. She doesn't know anything about me and Joe. None of it."  
  
They'd had a fight the night before he left for the weekend; she hadn't wanted him to go and he couldn't understand why. It was just a weekend, he went away for work for far longer periods on a regular basis. It had never occurred to him that she might have been worried about who he was going to be with, because as far as she knew there was no reason to be worried.  
  
When they got together, Joe had been with Marie long enough for Patrick to realise it was serious - it had always been clear he adored her, but by then he knew it wasn't going to fizzle out like he'd expected. After Anna, he'd half-heartedly hoped they'd rekindle what they'd had as kids, something comfortable and safe with someone he knew he could trust not to betray him, but he'd missed his chance.  
  
He'd known Elisa for a while, through friends. She and her sister had befriended them somewhere along the way, and they'd hung out a few times. She'd been tiny and feisty and smart and eventually informed him he was taking her to dinner and he'd done as he was told. She impressed him, outwitted him and was way out of his league - even now, he couldn't believe she'd agreed to marry him. And he really did love her, he really wanted to live out the rest of his days and raise their children and grandchildren together. If none of this had happened, he was sure that would still have been what they'd do. But things had grown complicated, and he'd wanted all of that, but he'd wanted other things, too, and he couldn't have both.  
  
And he hadn't said a thing to anyone about it, but somehow Pete was on to him. He shouldn't have been shocked, not after all this time, but it set him on edge all the same.  
  
"So, what's the deal? Are you fucking again?"  
  
" _No_."  
  
"Do you want to be?"  
  
"Honestly, it's the furthest thing from my mind, right now, Pete."  
  
"Didn't totally look like it."  
  
Patrick stopped abruptly, grabbing Pete's arm and yanking to make him wait. "Pete, I'm serious, you need to leave this alone, he can't think I have some kind of agenda, right now."  
  
"You do have an agenda."  
  
"Not the way you're trying to make out! I'm serious. _Please_ , don't say anything."  
  
Pete twisted his forearm to free it and shrugged. "I'm not going to intentionally ruin your friendship, dude, I just feel like now would be a bad time to get back into all the fucking drama."  
  
"That's why I don't want you to say anything! I just wanna do what I was always going to and pretend it isn't happening."  
  
He could see Pete's mind working, trying to figure out the details. "So, wait - if he has no idea, how come you're always sneaking around together?"  
  
"What? When did we ever sneak around together? That's bullshit."  
  
"Well, I mean, I can think of like, a handful of times in the last few months when I caught you holed up somewhere doing 'nothing'."  
  
"It's called conversation! Private, personal conversation, Pete, 'cause not everyone's into oversharing all the time and some of us at least try to stick to our wedding vows."  
  
"You're seriously telling me he doesn't even know?"  
  
"If he does, he's doing an amazing job of not acknowledging it."  
  
Pete stared at him for a moment, and then turned to continue along the path. "He's worse than you were."  
  
"Huh?" He watched Pete stroll away, remaining where he was for a few seconds before trotting after him.  
  
"If I'm not supposed to break your confidence to him, I can't break his confidence to you, kind of."  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"Think about it and let me know when you figure out how badly you fucked up."  
  
\---  
  
Andy was standing at the entrance to the rest stop, when Joe returned. He was watching the road, hoping that someone would pass by, that he could flag them down and explain their situation, maybe get some help or a ride or _something_. He knew Joe had made the right decision to stop, but he didn't want to wait here, didn't want to waste any time in making it home. His mind kept filling with the scent of his mom's perfume, the fabric softener she used, the promises he'd made to her, to take care of her for the rest of her life, no matter what. It didn't matter that she'd remarried, that she had a husband to take care of her, he'd promised when he was a little boy and he'd always meant to keep his word.  
  
He was frustrated by the fact that of all times for this to go wrong it was now, and the problems kept on coming. He could rise to them, he knew he could, but it was hard enough to focus without every conceivable obstacle being thrown at him, too. It wasn't that he didn't love the other three - that he wasn't glad to be with them and know they were safe - but they weren't Matt or Tyler. They didn't really understand what needed to be done, now. They seemed to think that they'd get home and that would be it. They'd dial a pizza and wait for something to happen. They didn't know that really they were only going home to collect the essentials and confirm to themselves that their families were, to all intents and purposes, deceased. That the next step would be to leave again - find some place they could survive the winter, when it came. Somewhere temperate and lush, where there was little risk of four straight months of snow or endless drought.  
  
It didn't matter that Menomonee Falls was home. It didn't matter that Winnetka or Glenview or Wilmette were home. They couldn't stay there. Maybe they could head to Portland where it was warmer and wetter - he had family there, his aunt and cousin; if they'd been taken, their homes would be vacant, they'd be a good place to stop until they arranged their own accommodation. Maybe Tyler and the girls had even made it out of the city before were taken, and were just off grid. He could use his help, because the other three were going to be exhausting, when it came down to realising that life had changed.  
  
"No sign of anybody?" Joe asked, stopping beside him and pushing the curls out of his face.  
  
"Not yet."  
  
"D'you think there's gonna be?"  
  
Andy took a slow breath and looked at him. "I think our chances are kind of slim."  
  
Joe nodded carefully. "I figured." There was a long pause as he lit a cigarette and gazed down the highway, blinking dopily. "We're stuck, aren't we?"  
  
"I don't know. I mean, worst case scenario, we walk back to that last town and take a car. If the place has been stripped, nobody's gonna need it, anymore."  
  
"Patrick'll leave a check," Joe noted, casting him a little sideways glance as he exhaled out of the corner of his mouth, away from where Andy was standing.  
  
It was hard not to crack a small grin at his deadpan observation. Joe had always had an acerbic wit that a lot of people took as snide digs, but it had been one of the things Andy had liked about him when he met him as an over-confident fourteen year old with wire-framed glasses and a mouth full of metal. He'd changed a lot, over the years, lost most of that childlike boldness to difficult late teens and an industry that pushed him aside because he wasn't as headline-ready as Pete or a baby-faced genius like Patrick. The anonymity had worked just fine for Andy, but they'd lost Joe somewhere along the way and he still felt like a shitty friend for never asking what he wanted. He'd just always thought that was Pete's job - it was always Pete's hand on the tiller, not his. But Joe was a pushover, he always had been; a sensitive guy with martyr complex that could be as infuriating as it was endearing. They'd all just assumed he'd run with whatever was happening.  
  
He still had vivid memories of their first summer tour, when he'd filled in because their real drummer quit the week before. Joe had just graduated high school, the youngest kid in his grade, and they'd talked one night, sitting in the front of the van while the others slept in the back. He had so many ideas, such a passionate enthusiasm for everything. He was single-handedly building and maintaining the band's website, pushing their music on everyone he could find online, he'd really believed they'd make it, even then.  
  
Of course, that whole summer had been an experience for Joe. Andy really only half understood it all, but the night of their Chicago show, he'd disappeared before their set and Andy had eventually found him halfway down the block, sitting on the curb, frantically trying to mop up tears with the hem of his Pretty Girls Make Graves t-shirt. He'd pretended it was too dark to notice, but Joe had been sitting at the foot of a streetlight, and he wasn't that stupid.  
  
He'd tried to ask the right questions without being intrusive or making him uncomfortable. At first, he'd assumed it was about a girl - it wasn't uncommon for guys to go away on tour and come back to find the girl they were seeing or liked had hooked up with someone from a rival band. They called it Road Roulette, because you never knew how you'd fared until the wheels stopped. In fairness to the girls, most of the dudes would hook up with people in distant towns where they'd never see them again, anyway. They were all young and frivolous, at the time.  
  
But sitting in the street, Joe had denied it was about a girl, and it wasn't post-tour blues - the shock of realising it was time to return to the real world could be jarring, Andy knew that. He was really running out of avenues to pursue when Patrick had appeared outside the venue, yelling something down to them that they couldn't hear, and then started to jog their way, still calling.  
  
_Fuck - can you, like… can you take him inside? Dude? Please?  
  
_ It had all fallen into place, then. Or, some of it had. He'd known who it was about, at least, but it had taken several days to see the connection. Because there had been a night, a week or so into the tour, when he and Pete and some of the Spitalfield guys had left a party early because the neighbours were threatening to call the cops. They'd returned to the vans in a murky parking lot and opened the rear doors to a flurry of curses and scrambling. Pete had closed the door as fast as he'd opened it and made some excuse about asking TJ for something at the other van.  
  
Andy hadn't thought much of it, at the time, but the next time he saw them, at the Fireside Bowl, Patrick had a girlfriend and Joe spent the night sitting in the corner, ignoring them.  
  
"So, I hear we're doing a campfire, anyway. Knew I should've picked up those marshmallows, yesterday."  
  
"Fire'll keep animals away."  
  
"Good. It'd suck to miss out on being abducted by aliens just to get eaten by a mountain shark."  
  
"You've been listening to Pete, again - I warned you about that. Bears aren't coming out here, they don't need to."  
  
"Are you sure they won't wanna like, come down and share our smorgasbord of protein bars and chips?"  
  
"I don't wanna share that, why would a bear who can catch his own salmon?"  
  
"A fair point."  
  
Andy watched him nod, as if this made perfect sense to him. "Listen, are you doing alright, lil' bro?"  
  
"You mean, like, except for everyone I love being stolen? Present company and that pair of losers excepted."  
  
"Well…"  
  
"Apart from that, sure."  
  
"It's okay not to be. I mean, I'm not. I just… You know that scene in Final Destination, where the dude gets sliced up by the fence and for a second he kind of stands there, looking stunned, and then he literally falls apart?"  
  
"It was Final Destination 2, but I get the analogy." Joe looked him in the eye for a moment, flicked the ash from his cigarette as he said, "Just for the record, I'd like it a whole bunch if you didn't die. You're my mom, now."  
  
Even though he was kidding, there was something in Joe's gaze that made him nod seriously and say, "I won't."

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Part 3  
** _It always seemed like hell was just living, breathing.  
  
  
  
_ It took forty minutes of Andy slapping Pete's hands out of the way and telling him 'setting shit on fire' was not the same as 'building a campfire' and it didn't matter how experienced he was at the former, before there was a final flicker of orange and the pocketful of receipts they'd commandeered from Joe began to smoulder under their small cone of tinder.  
  
Patrick had sat on the grass at the curb and let them get on with it. His dad had taken him and Kevin camping when they were small, but they were never allowed to mess around with the actual fire, on strict orders of their mother. He had no idea how to start a fire without the aid of matches and barbecue accessories.  
  
Joe had spent the entire time sitting in the back seat of the car with the door open, fiddling with his phone. There was no signal out here and no internet, perhaps he was looking through photos of his wife again. It made Patrick feel a little lonely. Not only was Elisa gone, but he had nothing to remind him of her except his wedding ring and he'd already broken at least one of the promises it symbolised.  
  
Maybe it was all taken away from him because he didn't deserve it.  
  
The sun had disappeared behind the ridge, and although the sky still had a blue hue to it, the canyon was getting rapidly darker. Andy's face reflected the golden glow in the half-light, and the sound of the river faded into the background with the raw squawk of small carrion roosting for the night.  
  
Patrick gazed steadily into the fire, contemplating all his shortcomings, berating himself for everything he'd ever done wrong, every time he should have been more loving, more thoughtful - and not always towards Elisa. He'd only really had two official romantic relationships, but there had been a time when he'd pushed boundaries, thinking he could do it without getting too attached, but he'd been wrong. He had grown attached - very attached - but it wasn't supposed to be anything more than a way of passing the time, so when he'd come home and found himself propositioned, he'd taken the chance. Apparently, this was a recurring theme in his life. His preferred coping strategy was to stick his head in the sand and dedicate himself to something else, which had probably never done him, or anybody, any favours.  
  
"I'd offer you a penny for 'em, but like, I basically only have cards," Joe said, bumping Patrick’s boot with the toe of his.  
  
Patrick looked up at him and gave a small, flat laugh, shifting on the strip of grass to allow Joe to sit beside him. "They're not even worth that," he replied.  
  
Joe carefully eased himself down to the ground, sighing heavily and giving a little groan as if his bones were aching. He may be the youngest of the four of them, but he was by far the most decrepit. Everything seemed to ache or creak or make him ill, it had always been the same. Even when they toured as kids he'd throw himself around on stage and then complain that the futon mattress in the back of the van was hurting him - and perhaps he'd been right, because he'd had to have back surgery soon after. Patrick could still remember wanting to visit him in the hospital while he was recovering, but his girlfriend at the time had insisted on coming along and Joe had been feeling too groggy from the pain meds to let them stay.  
  
"So, like… can I get a freebie?"  
  
Laughing a little, Patrick leaned over and rested his head on Joe's shoulder for a moment, before straightening back up. "I was just reminiscing, y'know? Thinking about all the things I could've done differently."  
  
Tilting his chin down slightly, Joe looked at him sidelong. "Like what?"  
  
"I dunno," he sighed, afraid of giving too much away. "You never know what you're not doing right until it's too late, right?"  
  
Pushing out his lip a little, Joe nodded slowly and linked his hands over his knees, fiddling absently with his wedding ring. "Sounds like my whole life, basically."  
  
"So, hey - let's make a promise: if things are really as messed up as I think they are, right now, we'll stop making mistakes. They're gonna be happy accidents, from now on, okay? I mean, we don't need to be punishing ourselves when life's doing a pretty amazing job of doing it for us, y'know?"  
  
Joe continued to slide his wedding ring back and forth from knuckle to knuckle, and then abruptly let it go to shake on it.  
  
"Are you two fucking snuggling again?" Pete demanded, smirking over the fire as it began to take hold of the wood they'd gathered, the flames flickering in front of his face and giving him an unholy grin. "I mean, your wives have been gone like five whole minutes, right?"  
  
"Oh, fuck you, dude," Joe snapped, sliding his hand out of Patrick's grasp and absently wiping his palm on his leg.  
  
"C'mon bro, I'm just jerking your chain! It's a joke."  
  
"Yeah, well, maybe I don't need your fucking jokes right now."  
  
"Sure, Captain Killjoy… I mean, it's not like you've been a fucking pissass all day or anything, and I'm just trying to lighten the mood because we're all feeling shitty. You used to be able to take a fucking joke, bro."  
  
Patrick saw the look on Joe's face the moment the words left Pete's mouth, and instinctively rested a hand on his arm. Joe shrugged him off, irritably.  
  
"I did, right? Like when you thought it was a neat fucking joke to be an adult tearing a little kid's clothes off in front of a bunch of other dudes he looked up to, every day, when he couldn't get away from you? Like that kind of fucking joke?"  
  
Patrick was almost willing Pete not to respond, but it was inevitable.  
  
"What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"  
  
"It means your fucking jokes aren't funny."  
  
" _No,_ " Pete pressed, "what is that supposed to mean?"  
  
"Forget it," Joe muttered, climbing to his feet stiffly and stepping onto the path, as if heading for the washrooms. But Pete was on his feet twice as fast. Patrick caught Andy's eye and they both shifted, ready to leap up and intervene. It was a well-honed skill after years of their brotherly scrapping, but today everyone's nerves were frayed.  
  
"You can't just say stuff like that and fucking chicken out. If you have something to say, say it."  
  
"Just leave me alone, I'm done with your crap, right now."  
  
Pete lunged closer as Joe dropped his head and started to walk away, sticking his arm in front of him, and both Patrick and Andy rose almost as if levitated. "Hey! Hey, hey, hey - what did you fucking mean?"  
  
"Pete, maybe you should give Joe a minute, we're all kind of highly strung, right now," Andy tried, levelly.  
  
"Well, of course I'm fucking highly strung _now_!" Pete argued.  
  
"So, maybe you should calm down, man, c'mon," Patrick suggested, stepping nearer and carefully placing himself within obstructing distance.  
  
"Seriously, Joe, what's your fucking problem? I wanna hear it. If it's such a big deal you wanna drag up something from half your life ago, dude, get it off your chest, tell me."  
  
The sound in Joe's voice made the hair on Patrick's neck stand on end.  
  
"You already fucking know. I mean, it was all your idea, right? You're the one who did it every day. You were the one who laughed hardest. And I was fifteen years old, Pete. I was a little kid and I'd begged my mom to let me come on tour with you, because I couldn't believe this really cool dude who I looked up to would even ask me to be in his band for two weeks. So, what did you fucking do? You basically fucking tortured me, man, and treated it like some amazing joke."  
  
"I didn't 'torture' you, you little jerk! I fucking looked out for you!"  
  
"No, you got mad when other assholes took shots at the kid you kept around to be the butt of your jokes! And I let you because you were basically my hero and I didn't wanna be shut out, like I'd already seen you do with other people. And after me, it was Dirty, right?"  
  
"That's bullshit…" Pete argued, but already his expression was softening. They all knew what Pete was like when he was young.  
  
"So, what did you think it felt like, when you stripped me naked for everyone to laugh at, literally every fucking day on that tour? I was _fifteen years old_ \- I'd never even kissed anyone, I was hardly done with puberty and you made totally fucking sure that being naked in front of people was the worst thing that ever happened to me! And all I could do, for that whole time, was pretend it was all fucking good so I didn't look like the loser you made me feel like."  
  
"Dude, it was just hazing you - we screwed with each other all the time - "  
  
"You fucking humiliated me, you asshole! You destroyed my confidence, so it took me seven years - _seven years -_ before I met someone I could trust, and just, like, be myself with… and now you think it's a fucking joke that she's gone! The only person who ever loved me was just taken away, and I can't get her back, or help her, and the reason I wasn't there is you. And that's so fucking funny, right? Fuck you."  
  
Joe pushed his arm out of the way and started to walk off, but then stopped and turned back to add, "You ought to fucking think about it, dude. Most adults who try to get teenagers naked go to jail."  
  
Patrick almost dove at Pete to stop him retaliating, but he didn't move. He was frozen to the spot, mouth open, eyebrows pinched.  
  
They all watched Joe walk away towards the yellow glow of the restrooms, like time had stilled and left them there. His words were ringing in all their ears, but for Patrick it was the claim that it had taken seven years for him to find someone he could trust or loved him that hurt. It was only a year later that they'd met, two years later that things had gotten really complicated between them… It sure as hell hadn't been Marie who'd been there, then.  
  
"I didn't… I thought he was…" Pete stammered, looking at Andy plaintively, because Andy looked fit to lay him out. "I was as much a fucking kid as he was!"  
  
"You were a goddamn adult," Andy muttered at him, tossing the stick he'd been using to poke the fire onto the asphalt. He turned and made to follow, ever the big brother looking after him, but how could he relate to what Joe was going through, right now? It wasn't Andy who'd been there, or Andy he'd 'trusted' enough to lose his virginity with in the back of that nasty fucking van.  
  
"Andy, I'll go," Patrick said, dropping a pat on Pete's shoulder as he turned. "You take care of this jerk."  
  
"No, wait, I should go," Pete said.  
  
"Dude, right now, you're the last person he needs to see. You can apologise later."  
  
The restroom door slammed shut on its closer before Patrick got there, and he took a moment to breathe and compose himself a little before going in. After all, Pete's jibe had been just as cutting and dismissive towards him, only Pete knew how he felt to some degree.  
  
Joe was standing with his hands pressed against the edge of a sink, shoulders hunched and head hanging. Patrick thought about leaving him there for a few minutes to give him a little space, because sometimes crowding him would make things worse but today, more than ever, they had to stick together.  
  
"Hey," he said, softly, frowning as Joe straightened up but kept his head down as he wiped a wrist across his cheek. "D'you mind some company?"  
  
Joe shrugged a little and shook his head, so Patrick slipped inside and moved over to slide an arm around him, resting his cheek on Joe's shoulder as he squeezed.  
  
"If it makes you feel any better, I think he just realised how shitty his behaviour was."  
  
Joe gave a snort of derision. "Only fourteen years late…"  
  
"Yeah." He paused. "For what it's worth, he pissed me off, too."  
  
"Great, so now we both feel shitty."  
  
"Do you wanna talk about it? I mean, I know we kind of have before, but…" Years ago, in the back of the van, as an 'It's way too hot not to be mostly naked' agreement, because Patrick was embarrassed to take off his shirt and Joe was trying to reassure him that he understood.  
  
"No," Joe sniffed, turning to lean back against the row of basins. It placed them almost hip to hip until Patrick gently eased himself away. He propped one hip against the counter, instead, and rubbed at the back of Joe's arm. "Doesn't it piss you off that he talks about Elisa like that?"  
  
Wearily, Patrick shrugged. "He's just being Pete. I'm not saying he's not being a jerk, y'know? But… this is how he deals with things. I know it's fucked up enough for you and me, right now, but his little boy was just taken, Joe… I can't even imagine how he's feeling."  
  
Joe lifted his eyes to the ceiling, watching bugs buzz around the harsh fluorescent light. "Yeah."  
  
"And I don't want you to think I'm excusing anything, dude - he has been a _monumental_ asshole at basically every opportunity, for years - but I genuinely think that he didn't realise exactly what he did to you, y'know? Not that that makes it okay, but… I don't think he meant to make you feel that way. He just couldn't always get into anybody else's shoes, before. He thought it was funny, so he assumed you did too, y'know?"  
  
"Yeah, well it wasn't."  
  
"No. I get that. And I think he's starting to…"  
  
Joe snorted doubtfully.  
  
They lingered for a few moments, and Patrick could feel the question rising in his chest. He was supposed to be comforting Joe, but what had been said, standing by the fire, had changed things for him, too. Things he thought he could take for granted, until that moment.  
  
"Can I ask you something?" Patrick watched as Joe shrugged, chewing on his lip for a moment before he continued. "Back when… I mean, I just… we used to be close, y'know? And I know things with us were never like you and Marie, but… you trusted me, right? I mean… I trusted you and I kind of thought...."  
  
Joe didn't answer, at first, he just swallowed and carried on gazing at the ceiling. Finally, he shrugged again, a stiff and measured movement. "I did. But it was never love, was it? It was just something we did to pass the time."  
  
Patrick's mouth went dry, suddenly. At the time, he didn't know. It had started like that, but Joe was gentle and understanding and just as awkward as Patrick felt. Everything had been kind of unexpected and exploratory - they'd learned a lot together, for better and worse - and he'd thought about it a lot, afterwards. Even once he started dating Anna, he still looked at him when he thought no one else was, and still conjured up memories of half-lidded blue eyes, pupils wide and beautiful, gazing up at him from the floor of the van when nothing else was working, because that always did. It still did - a guilty secret that somehow made it even more effective. He'd wished, often, that they'd had a chance to take it further - see where it had the potential to go - but the tour ended and there wasn't the time. Tours were like Vegas - they seemed to happen in an alternate reality, that you could enter into and experience in any way you wanted, but eventually you'd have to come back to the real world. He'd been strongly warned about it in advance, and that had been his mindset the whole time: this was a chance to be the person he was afraid to be, just for a little while.  
  
And he hadn't really known or expected the other person in him to be the one that came out on sticky summer nights of enforced isolation, listening to _Songs for the Deaf_ in their underwear. They'd progressed rapidly from _You don't need to be ashamed of your body, dude_ , to _I may have slightly stolen this lube from Walgreens if you wanna try again_ , and _I know it's like 65° but I'm gonna spoon you while we sleep.  
  
_ They'd just been kids, at the time, but he wasn't now, and he recognised what he'd felt. Hearing Joe dismiss it so pointedly was a shock. Especially now. Especially when he'd spent years holding those memories as comfort, and felt them grow into an ache that wasn't 'what could have been' anymore, but simply, 'I still love you.'  
  
"I… yeah, I mean, I guess you're right," he said, shrugging and turning so his back was against the sinks alongside him, and Joe couldn't see his expression so easily. He scratched at his face, where his sideburns used to be, back then, to disguise the wounded flush in his cheeks. "I just wanted you to not feel like you've lost everyone. I'm still here, is all."  
  
Joe was quiet for a moment, folding his arms across himself and nibbling on the skin at the side of his thumb. "Thank you," he said, finally, and Patrick could only nod.  
  
They remained in silence a little longer, and Patrick was just beginning to wonder if he should leave, if maybe Joe really did want space - if maybe he should give himself some space - when he softly declared, "You are important to me, dude… I don't want you to think you're not. It means a lot to have you here, but right now, I'm like… I'm pissed off and stuff and I'm gonna be shitty company."  
  
"Do you want me to leave?"  
  
"No - I didn't mean that…"  
  
"If you want some time on your own - "  
  
"No, it's not like that, I want you to stick around, I just… I don't have a whole lot to offer you back."  
  
"I wasn't going to ask for anything," Patrick shrugged, straightening up, "and I'm not sure I do, either, but…"  
  
He trailed off, feeling like he'd said too much and was risking revealing what he'd been trying to keep hidden for months, just when Joe had made it clear his memories were very different to Patrick's. But then, leaning away from the bench, Joe turned towards him slightly.  
  
"Maybe, like… a hug would be kind of cool, right now?" he said.  
  
Patrick looked up at him, his eyes a little shiny and his lids heavy under ugly fluorescent light, and nodded. He opened his arms a little, accepting, and Joe gave a small sigh and leaned in to press him against the counter.  
  
"Better hope Pete doesn't see," he mumbled into Patrick's shoulder, head bowed all the way to reach it.  
  
"I'm not interested in what Pete sees. I'm pretty sure he's smart enough to keep his mouth shut for tonight, anyway. He knows he's fucked up..."  
  
"First time for everything, huh?" Joe laughed grimly, and Patrick could feel it humming against his chest.  
  
Sighing, he gave him a small, reprimanding slap on the back of his hip where his hand was resting and pulled away to find a seat on the counter, his knuckles wrapping around the edge. Joe remained close enough that his hips pressed against Patrick's knees. "I'm not gonna advocate more Pete bashing, dude. He was a dick, but he loves you and most of the time he means well. You can be mad at him for what he did, I'm completely on board with that, but none of us would be where we are now without him."  
  
"I'd pretty much wanna be anywhere except where I am now…"  
  
"I'm talking about the band, Joe, c'mon."  
  
For a moment they both paused, and Patrick was sure the same thing was passing through both their minds. He felt his shoulders grow stiff at the thought. The band had only just gotten back together. It had saved him from himself when he'd lost his way and if he didn't have it as an outlet, he wasn't sure what he was going to do. He'd almost given up on everything once, without this chance he'd probably lose his mind.  
  
"You think there's still gonna be a band, dude?" Joe asked, carefully. "Who's left to buy the records or put them out?"  
  
"There has to be a band," he told him, "even if we have to start from nothing, even if we just do stuff for us, there has to be a band, Joe. I need this. I need the band and I need - " _you_ "- all of you. You saw how it got… there can't not be a band, okay, I can't - I need this."  
  
"Okay. We'll figure it out," Joe soothed, rubbing his arm and making the hair at the back of his neck prickle.  
  
"I just… I just got you back, y'know?"  
  
Joe looked down at him with a pensive frown on his face. "Dude… Look, I don't wanna be like, dickish or anything, but your wife - I mean… the band can wait. We're gonna have bigger shit to deal with than whether we can still tour and who's gonna, like, produce our next album, yeah? You get that, right?"  
  
"Yeah, Joe, I do, but I can't get her back, and this -"  
  
"Ric, dude, your whole family is probably gone. You're never gonna see them again. The band is just - "  
  
"The band is my life. I tried not doing the band and I tried doing stuff alone, and all it did was prove that I need it."  
  
"Life has changed," Joe told him, softly but firmly, in a way that reminded him of Andy, and he'd have laughed and pointed it out if things weren't so bleak. "Dude, everything has changed."  
  
\---  
  
By the time Joe ushered Patrick out of the restroom and back towards the orange glow of their little campfire, he'd half-forgotten his fight with Pete. He could feel it as a tense weight in his stomach, though, the daunting strain of dealing with Pete after he'd been deprived of his own sense of goodness. He'd grown up with Pete. In some ways, he felt like he'd outgrown Pete. Pete had had the life he wanted - Joe could still remember listening to him talking about what life would be like when they were famous, about the celebrity girlfriend and personal brand, his face on every magazine - and he'd watched Pete get that, get everything he wanted, and screw it up. And in the background Joe had waited, dreaming of doing a job he loved every day and having someone - pretty much anyone, at that point - who'd love him, despite all his weird little quirks. He'd got both of those things, in the end, and been more grateful for them than he could ever express, but his share had been taken, again. The band was over, regardless of the optimism he'd given in and fed to Patrick when he was too worn out to keep managing his expectations for him, and Marie was… lost. He'd lost her and it still felt like Pete's fault, even if Pete could never have known.  
  
Everything felt like Pete's fault when he was pissed off with him, just like everything felt like Patrick's when times were tough. But where Patrick would beat himself up, once he realised, Pete would play the wounded party - _How could you not forgive me? Why did you expect so much of me? It wasn't like you remember, I did it to help._ And when you'd known him as long as Joe had - more than half his life - you got used to it, you accepted it, because everyone knew that Pete was a special case. Pete was blown sugar, sweet and patently complicated, but so fragile he'd shatter if you handled him wrong.  
  
And now, he was sitting on the curb, hugging his knees with his feet turned in, like a child, looking up at him with sad, doe-eyes and eyebrows pinched up in the middle. Joe stopped a few feet away, while Patrick dropped himself down onto the grass verge, beside Pete, glumly. He could feel Pete gazing up at him, waiting for him to say something - _Sorry I got mad at you,_ probably, because he couldn’t cope with the idea that he was in the wrong. And he wasn't going to say that, because he wasn't sorry. Deep down, he was still pissed off, still angry for his fifteen year old self, who'd been starting to understand what was happening, why he desperately wanted to hang around with certain dudes all the time, when Pete had scarred him for life. What he could really have used, was someone he looked up to that he could talk to about shit like that - because his parents were cool, but they weren't part of the community he spent his time in, they'd love him regardless but his friends might not. And he'd thought about telling Pete, who he'd seen as an activist, someone pro-acceptance, pro-equality - but then, it had all happened. He'd thought, for a long time, that Pete had figured him out, and that was what it was. That was why he was being an asshole and exposing him to the others, to make a point. The embarrassment and shame he'd felt had stayed with him for years, after.  
  
And then, Patrick happened.  
  
At eighteen, Patrick had been even more self-conscious than Joe. Because there were some things that Joe felt reasonably confident about - he was a decent guitarist, he was a good friend, people liked him for some reason… But Patrick's only small area of self-worth was stocked 100% in his being a tiny bit smarter than every other asshole. Only, everyone in the band was smart, which meant he didn't even have that. It had resulted in such a lack of self-esteem that it made Joe feel a hundred feet tall, in comparison. Patrick didn't even realise what kind of prodigal musical genius he was, until years later.  
  
He also hadn't known that Joe had a crush on him that could probably be picked up on radar.  
  
Joe had never expected anything to come of it. Not for a second. But three nights into that tour, sitting in the van in a playground parking lot, at 1am, across the street from the venue they'd played, it had been so hot that Patrick was almost in tears of frustration, sweating through his clothes, because he always ran a little warm to the touch. The cab windows were fully down, but it made no difference, there wasn't even a breeze outside.  
  
That night, Patrick became the first person he told what had happened on that tour. It had been a bargain: I'll expose this shitty thing that I went through, and lose my shirt, if you trust me enough to take off yours so you don't go insane before morning.  
  
What he hadn't expected was for Patrick to lift his arms carefully and wait for Joe to peel it off his damp skin for him. He'd done it, though, kneeling behind him on Patrick's sleeping bag, sitting back down quickly to drop his hands in his lap and hide the awkward boner it had inspired. They'd both pretended it wasn't happening.  
  
Until the next night.  
  
But it had all been for nothing. Play acting. He'd been enough of an idiot to think it all meant something, but it hadn't. He'd thought maybe he was over his trust issues, now, he could let himself be a little vulnerable, set aside the jokes and be honest about things. But then it had all been swept away in an instant and he realised that he'd given Patrick too much of his trust - too much of himself - and now he was humiliated again, by the person he'd really wanted to see him.  
  
It had been years before he met Marie. Nobody had even come close to being trusted, in the meantime.  
  
So, for years, Pete's stupid actions had affected his life, and he wasn't going to apologise for being pissed off about it.  
  
"You alright?" Andy asked, looking up from where he was crouched opposite, nursing a bottle of water.  
  
Joe shrugged at him and pulled out his cigarettes, wishing he'd brought his stash box, but it had been too risky across state lines without the deniability of a hired tour bus that 'hadn't been checked properly after the last band left'.  
  
"I'm gonna go smoke, a minute," he said, stepping onto the asphalt and heading towards the nearest streetlight, at the bottom of the exit ramp from the highway.  
  
He'd only got as far as lighting it when he heard footsteps behind him, scuffing at the road as they walked. He braced himself for the intrusion, knowing who it was just from the sound of his footfall.  
  
"So, like… can we talk, or whatever?"  
  
Joe shrugged. He didn't particularly want to, but he wasn't going to get a choice.  
  
"I mean… do you hate me, bro?"  
  
"No more than I did a week ago."  
  
"Oh." Pete seemed to muse on this for a moment, and then asked, anxiously, "Did you hate me then?"  
  
"I don't hate you, you jerk. Stop making shit about you."  
  
"But it kind of is, dude."  
  
"It's kind of about how much of an asshole you were, sure. But like, right now, it's about the shit that happened to me, basically."  
  
"I didn't know."  
  
"What, you thought it was fucking carnival fun for me, dude?"  
  
"You kept laughing - "  
  
"Because I thought if you didn't think it was working, you'd quit! What else was I gonna do, Pete? I was fifteen, you were all in your twenties, I didn't wanna look like a weak little kid! And I did tell you to stop, like every fucking time."  
  
"But I wasn't trying to upset you, I just - "  
  
"You didn't think. Because you never do. All you think about is like, impressing people and making them love you, and you don't think about fucking up the people who already did, while you're doing it."  
  
Pete opened his mouth to protest, but then frowned and shut it again.  
  
"I thought maybe you grew up, dude, but you still do shit like this - like laughing that Marie is gone. You _laughed_ about my wife being fucking abducted by whatever the fuck those things were, Pete. I'm probably never gonna see her again and I don't even know if I can deal with that, but I'm trapped and - "  
  
"Dude, you think I'm not fucked up about this too, kind of? I have a kid, and you assholes were more concerned about getting back to check the bad guys really took your mommies, than letting me go back home and check on him… You're not the only one who's bummed out, right now, bro."  
  
"He's not even gonna be there. Nobody's gonna be there, whether we go to LA or New York or fucking home! The world is basically over, Pete."  
  
"How can it be over - we're still here!"  
  
"Because you're not the centre of the fucking universe! _C'mon._ Right now, none of us really get how fucked up this is. You saw those shitty little towns, back down the freeway - they were like, completely cleaned out. It's basically just us and a couple dozen rednecks who were in the asshole of nowhere when it happened. We're like the crumbs in the bottom of the chip bag. We're what's left over, dude. We're just… the dregs. The only reason we're even going home, is because there's nothing else we can do. When we get there, what then? 'Cause, I mean like, Patrick thinks we can still do the fucking band, like our biggest problem isn't gonna be how we eat when all the stores are abandoned and full of rotted out stuff that expired already…"  
  
"Andy has a plan, dude, he'll work shit out."  
  
"What for? Is this a world you wanna live in? It's like… it's an emotional wasteland. There's nothing here to make you wanna carry on."  
  
Pete snorted. "I'm gonna use that in a song."  
  
"How?! There's not even gonna be a band!"  
  
"Okay, but can you, like, not say that to Patrick, or whatever?" Pete asked, and he looked serious, suddenly.  
  
"We already had that conversation. He's dealing way better than most of us."  
  
"He's hanging by a thread, pretty much."  
  
"Isn't everybody?"  
  
"Joe, man, he kind of had a breakdown, the band is his _thing_ , right? It means everything to him. You can't take that from him again."  
  
"What do you mean 'again'?" he demanded.  
  
"It wasn't me or Andy who wanted to quit, was it?"  
  
"I never said I wanted to quit, I -"  
  
"You kind of did, bro. Like, all the time. And you acted like a little brat in interviews because it wasn't good enough for you to be a 24-year-old multi-millionaire in a major band off the back of his genius, or whatever…"  
  
"That's not fucking fair! I didn't want it to be 'off the back of his genius' - that was the whole point. All I wanted was a chance to write some stuff, it's not a whole fucking lot to ask."  
  
"It was enough to nearly end all our careers, dude, it was enough to ask that. You took away the most important thing in his life."  
  
Joe shrugged back at him, stiffly, frowning at the smoldering end of his cigarette, one arm wrapped across himself in the growing chill. "I'd have thought that would have been Elisa."  
  
Although, it hadn't really seemed like it, back in the restrooms. She seemed like an afterthought and it weirded him out. There was a time when she called every shot in Patrick's life that wasn't called by Pete.  
  
"Yeah," Pete replied, carefully. "Well. Stuff changes, I guess."  
  
"Changes how?"  
  
"Same way everything changes - when you're not expecting it."  
  
"Are you doing riddles or something, man, 'cause - "  
  
"Okay, so like, do not tell him I told you, but things were kind of off. They had a fight right before he came out to Vegas, kind of, so I think he's sorta… He feels like he did this. Like he wished this shit to happen, which is dumb as fuck, but you know how our little dude is, man… If he can't find a stick to beat himself with, he'll take a whole tree."  
  
For a few moments, Joe contemplated this. It seemed to make a certain level of sense, in light of Patrick's attitude. "Did he say what about?"  
  
"I guess she just got used to him being around and since lately she didn't feel like he was really hers, anymore."  
  
"He didn't say anything…"  
  
"No. I know."  
  
He hesitated, not sure if he should ask. "Do you think they were breaking up, or like…?"  
  
Pete shook his head. "Not unless he knew there was something else. You know what he's like, he can't let go, even when he knows he should."  
  
"Do you think he should have?"  
  
"I never thought he should have held on in the first place, kind of."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"'Cause you don't marry your rebound."  
  
"Rebound? They didn't even meet until like two years after Anna, dude, how can that be a rebound?"  
  
For a long moment, Pete looked at him, then down at his shoes, and shrugged. "It is what it is."  
  
"I thought he was happy…"  
  
"So did he. Weird how things turn out, huh?"  
  
Later, when the fire burned down and they climbed into the car to sleep, Andy and Pete in the front, Patrick with Joe on the flattened out back seats, he lie awake, thinking. Somehow, Pete had got through the whole evening without ever apologising, but Joe had been too distracted to care, by that point. He couldn't help wondering what was going on for Patrick and Elisa - if he'd missed something, if he should have been a better friend and been more supportive. Maybe it should have been a clue when Patrick was so keen on spending time in the studio or out with him, after hours. He'd never had strong feelings about her, exactly, but he hadn't ever felt like they were friends, the way he did with Ashlee. He'd watched her on tour, though, not engaging with everything as much as everyone else's partners did, watched Patrick doing his best to keep her occupied and entertained. It had irritated him, to the point where he was glad they weren't sharing a bus because, in his opinion, Patrick shouldn't need to work that hard to keep anyone happy.  
  
Still, he'd married her, hadn't he? He must have been happy and she must have wanted to be with him - it was less than a year ago, how could anything have changed so much in that time?  
  
He gazed at the back of Patrick's head, wondering why he hadn't told him if he and Elisa were having problems. They basically talked about everything, these days, one way or another. He thought back to a night a week or so ago, when they'd all got together for a pre-birthday dinner for Pete, with Brendon and Sarah, and Spencer and Linda - Andy hadn't been there, but Marie and Elisa both were. He'd come back from the bathroom later in the evening and Elisa had left. She was tired, Patrick said, and Joe wasn't in a position to contradict him - they'd been sat on Patrick's opposite sides and he'd spent most of the night talking to Patrick while Marie laughed with Sarah and Brendon until her make-up ran. He'd dabbed a gleeful smudge of mascara from under her eye with a spare napkin, while she continued to giggle. It had been a really good night, and they'd shared a taxi with Patrick after they all went on to bar, dropping him home en route to the apartment - one on either side of him, Marie asleep on his shoulder, Patrick drumming his hands to the music the driver was listening to, occasionally using Joe's knee in place of a high-hat.  
  
Joe had been happy. Really happy. He had the two people he loved most in the world with him - his best friend, and the love of his life - and everything had worked out okay. The band was refreshed and all their problems had been talked out. They had a whole future ahead of them and he was genuinely looking forward to it.  
  
When he got out, Patrick had leaned across him to give Marie a peck on the forehead as she slept, and Joe had tapped his own brow, jokily requesting his share. Patrick had looked at him for a second, a small smile wavering on his lips, then leaned in and granted him a small kiss between his eyebrows before rubbing his palm down Joe's face playfully, and half-stumbling out of the car. Joe had watched until he was safely in the building before letting the driver pull away.  
  
But what if the night hadn't been as happy for Patrick? What if he'd got home and they'd argued, what if she'd actually left because she was pissed about something? Why the hell wouldn't he tell him that?  
  
And now she was gone, just like Marie, and they'd never be able to work it out. It was no wonder Patrick had seemed kind of weird, lately.  
  
When he fell asleep, he did so with an arm tucked around his friend's waist - partly so he didn't roll onto the front seats, and partly so he knew he wasn't alone.  
  
\---  
  
It was around 7am, when Andy shook Pete and told him it was time to go. They'd decided the night before that they would be the ones to head on up the highway a couple of miles, to see if there was anything open in that direction. They knew what wasn't open, the way they'd already come, it seemed to make more sense to hope there was something ahead of them, instead.  
  
He'd kept trying his phone for signal, even when it became obvious there wasn't going to be any in the canyon, and it was making him anxious to see his battery down to 27% and no notifications coming through. What if, while they'd been stuck there in that ravine, the aliens had come back and taken more people?  
  
In back, Joe and Patrick were curled around each other, still sound asleep, Joe's jacket wrapped across them both. He looked at them for a minute, before realising that Andy, too, was watching. He glanced over and met Pete's eye pointedly, then turned and opened the door to get out.  
  
Pete followed, picking up his boots from the footwell and dragging them on, on the asphalt.  
  
The sound of the doors woke the other two up and they began to stir as Andy grabbed a couple of water bottles from where they'd stashed them under the car - there was no room inside with the seats all flattened out.  
  
"It's 7am now," he was telling them, through the open trunk door. "We're gonna go a couple miles north east, and if that doesn't turn up anything, we'll come back. If we're not back by noon, head back in the other direction, do whatever you have to do, but get out of here."  
  
"Like what?" Patrick asked, rubbing his face sleepily.  
  
"Figure it out when you come to it," Andy told him, pointedly, stuffing a couple of protein bars in his jacket pocket. "But we'll probably be back within a couple hours, anyway."  
  
"You'd better be." Patrick climbed out of the car and walked round to give them both hugs, like he thought he'd never see them again.  
  
"Dude, if this is the last time we might see each other, you wanna give me a goodbye kiss?" Pete asked, puckering up just to see him grimace and laugh.  
  
"No."  
  
"I'm pretty much the last dude on Earth and you _still_ won't?"  
  
"I'm pretty sure the caveat was that hell would have to freeze over…" Patrick told him, clipping him on the side of the head, lightly.  
  
"Fine! Well, look after Trohman. You're the eldest, now, you need to be a big boy, right?"  
  
"Fuck off," Joe grumbled, sticking a hand out of the car to flip him off. Joe was not a morning person, and it was a little heartening to get a familiar, grouchy reaction from him. After the night before, he wasn't sure exactly how things stood, if Joe was still upset with him, if he needed to do more. Maybe going for gas and rescuing them all would be enough to show he wasn't the asshole Joe apparently thought he was.  
  
"I love you, too, bro," he offered, taking his bottle from Andy. "We'll catch you later…"  
  
"Don't look back," Andy instructed under his breath as they walked away. "Don't make it seem like a big deal."  
  
"Is it a big deal, dude?" Pete asked.  
  
"It will be if we don't find anything."  
  
For half a mile or so, they walked in silence, the steady incline leaving Pete a little breathless and marginally irritated that Andy wasn't so much as breaking a sweat. He was gonna have to get back to the gym. Except would there even be gyms, now? Would there be any kind of store or service left running? They hadn't heard the news in almost 24 hours, he had no idea what the developments were and it made him kind of nervous. He didn't like being out of the loop. He needed to know what the rest of the world was doing - if anyone cared, if the kids who'd replied to his call in the night were doing okay. If anyone else had picked up on it, needed his reassurance.  
  
"So, did you actually apologise to Joe, last night?"  
  
"Huh?" Pete asked, a little thrown by the question, at first. "Joe? Well, yeah, I mean… pretty much."  
  
"You actually said the words, 'I'm sorry'?"  
  
"I don't know, dude, probably. We kind of talked about a lot of stuff."  
  
"You mean 'no'," Andy sighed, punching him in the arm. "For fuck's sake, Pete! How hard can it be?"  
  
"It's not like he's actually gonna forgive me," Pete replied. "If holding grudges was an olympic sport, dude'd be living in Scrooge McDuck's basement."  
  
"That's not why you apologise, you apologise because you fucked up! Don't you think that everything else that's going on makes doing shit as simple as this a whole lot more important? You and me and Patrick are all the guy has, now."  
  
"You're all I have, too."  
  
"Yeah," Andy muttered. "All the more reason for you not to fuck this up. We need to stick together, right now. You're not abandoning me again."  
  
"Again?" Pete asked.  
  
"Yeah. Again."  
  
"When did I ever abandon you, dude?"  
  
"2009."  
  
"What the hell? I didn't want the band to break up, either!"  
  
"No, but how much did we hang out for the next three years? How often did you come see me?"  
  
"Dude, we were all busy, I -"  
  
"You were busy fucking your life up. Patrick was busy fucking himself up. Joe was busy saying 'fuck you' to Patrick - I didn't see him for months, until he needed a drummer. You all abandoned me."  
  
"I didn't abandon you - I just… I didn't see anybody, dude, I didn't even see Patrick… And I mean, you could have just, like, come down and hung out."  
  
For a few paces, Andy didn't say anything. "I wasn't in a position to do that."  
  
"I grew a fucking _beard_ , bro. You think I was? Why is it Hate On Pete Week, all of a sudden? It's like everybody thinks I did this, kind of."  
  
"It's more like right now, nobody has the spare fucks to give for coddling your ego…"  
  
There was a painful clench in Pete's chest. Nothing hurt like Andy being harsh, because usually, when Andy was harsh, he was also fair, and he didn't want to believe that this was a fair assessment of the way things were.  
  
"If I'm that much hard work, why do you even keep me around?"  
  
"Because you're family, and even when you screw up, there's enough about you and what you do, that balances it out. That doesn't mean I haven't secretly rooted for Patrick to break your jaw, every once in a while, if only so you'd shut the fuck up, but when you weren't around I missed you. So I guess I'm stuck with your self-absorbed ass."  
  
Huffing impatiently, Andy slung an arm tight around Pete's neck, in lieu of affection. Pete wrapped both arms around Andy's waist in response, allowing himself to be half-dragged up the slope.  
  
Having Andy with him changed everything, because he trusted Andy. He knew Andy would have some idea what to do, like he'd always thought his dad could handle anything, no matter how huge. There had been more than one occasion in Pete's life when Andy had been his appropriate adult, who'd helped simply by existing in his timeline. When they'd drifted, during the band's break, Gabe had somewhat filled the role of bailing him out of his own stupidity and mental spiral, but if Gabe was a good friend, Andy was his spirit guide. Higher perspective over rational advice.  
  
It hurt when anyone was mad at him, but Andy made him feel like he'd disappointed his mom; only Andy was on his level and he couldn't excuse it with a generation gap and tell himself Andy just didn't understand.  
  
So, he didn't reply, he just walked on, unwilling to acknowledge that he was sulking, thumbing the power button on his phone but afraid to press it, in case it wasted battery unnecessarily.  
  
"I know you're worried," Andy said, as the road levelled out ahead of them for a while. "I don't know what it's like to be a parent and have something like this happen, I don't pretend I do, but… are you dealing okay? You're hardly acknowledging it."  
  
It was weird, actually. He felt kind of numb to it. Like he knew they were gone, but his brain couldn't accept that they were. In some parallel universe inside his head, Bronx was playing in the pool with his Nemo water wings, while Ashlee sat on a lounger, before the day got too hot; or getting ready for kindergarten or whatever it was they did on a Wednesday in the real world. And Meagan would be asleep at home, lazing around with the balcony doors open and the smell of the ocean drifting in. It was how they woke up most mornings (afternoons, often). He couldn't not visualise them doing that right now.  
  
They'd passed through deserted towns, skimmed the outskirts of Las Vegas, but it had felt surreal - it hadn't felt like this was the world, now - and without the radio news or breaking alerts on his phone, he'd half-forgotten what really took place.  
  
He was a tiny bit pissed that it was Joe who'd been watching when they swept overhead. Jealous that he'd missed it, standing in a lame gas station store, holding bottles of pop while his Independence Day moment happened without him. Maybe that made him slightly less inclined to sympathy, not least because the oblivious little dick was probably the only one of them who was going to get the choice of a second chance to be happy, and was almost certainly going to reject it for an opportunity to play the victim - like billions of people hadn't been snatched and he was the only one grieving.  
  
He loved Joe like he loved Andrew, but he was such hard work, sometimes, so far up his own asshole that he had no concept of how needy he was. Pete could see the hints he dropped about wanting certain things, all the way from the opposite coast pretty much, but more often than not, he made a point of ignoring them until the guy manned the fuck up and addressed them like an adult. The other two lived in passive bliss, most of the time, happy to do what was needed, assuming someone else knew best - provided it wasn't a question of track order on whatever album they were working on, now. So they existed in a polarity of what Pete thought was a good idea and how long it took Joe to throw a bitchfit because no one was picking up that he was sulking because he disagreed and couldn't gather his balls together long enough to say something constructive.  
  
Pete had watched, years ago - years and years ago, now - as he'd miraculously got himself hooked up with the kid he'd had a crush on, the only kid who'd been awkward enough to make Joe look competently suave, and then basically thrown it all away because he expected Patrick - Patrick, who was as wholesome and dense as pumpkin pie - to know what he wanted.  
  
He didn't say anything to Joe because it was his own responsibility to fix it, if that was what he wanted, and he thought he should learn that lesson the hard way. He'd waited to see them finally figure their shit out, assuming that every tour would see a resolution, but they never had. It was sad, in a way. He still thought the hiatus was more about the unresolved anger Joe was harbouring because Patrick hadn't read his mind, than it was Joe wanting to write. It was kind of a headfuck worthy of Pete himself, to want Patrick to play and approve of music expressing all his darkest feelings about how much Patrick had pissed him off. He felt like he should be impressed by that, on some level, by the bitterness of it or the twisted romance of it, or just the fact that he'd been that influential on the kid.  
  
"I'm going to take the silence as 'I want to say 'no' but you're going to judge me'."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I'm not going to judge you for not being okay that your kid and your girlfriend were taken, Pete."  
  
"No, I know, but… I guess I still feel like Marty McFly, kind of. Like, they're gone from the photograph, but I'm gonna turn back time and fix it, eventually."  
  
Andy didn't say anything, like he was afraid to point out the truth - that he wasn't going back in time to fix this, as if he didn't fucking know already. As if he wasn't actually 34 years old and a parent. Like he was all broken and messed up, as he had been when Gabe had been the one who showed up straight off a plane from New York, and not one of his band had been there to look out for him. It was kind of too late for that, now. And if he was going to come out of this a different kind of messed up, then he was, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Right now, worrying wasn't going to change anything, and he was cool with imagining them all back home where he left them.  
  
For a long time, they carried on, not really finding anything to say to each other. The morning sun was rising over the mountainside and it was getting hotter even as they walked higher in altitude on the warming asphalt. It was well after eight when a tunnel opened up ahead of them, around the curve of the rock face, a pin prick of light in the distance, far into the dark. He hoped it was a metaphor; wanted to write about it, twist it in words so he could make everyone believe that it was.  
  
It startled him when Andy grasped his arm, pulling him aside from the middle of the lane they'd been walking in. "Pete - do you hear that?"  
  
"What? Are the birds saying what an asshole I am, now, too?"  
  
Andy just grimaced and hushed him, turning to look in both directions, trying to catch whatever it was again.  
  
And then, Pete heard it, too. The low hum of an engine. Instinctively, he looked up, expecting a small plane, high in the sky above them, but there was nothing, and suddenly Andy was running forward up the highway, waving his arms and yelling.  
  
When he thought about it, later, he couldn't really remember the details, just the intense relief as the state trooper's truck pulled up in front of them and a barrel-chested man in his late forties got out. He'd looked both pleased and sorry to see them, talked about them being lucky he found them as he held open the truck door for him to get in, the next gas station was twenty miles up the highway.  
  
The small town he brought them to was just as deserted as the other had been - at least at first glance. He took them to a gas station and knocked on the door of a single-storey house across the street, until a nervous elderly man walked out in a white tank and slacks, his rifle slung over his shoulder, keys jangling in his fingers.  
  
"He's terrified," Pete whispered to Andy, as they picked up a couple of canisters each to fill. "It's like he doesn't know they're gone, or something."  
  
"Maybe we're the ones who ought to be more on his wavelength," Andy shrugged, glancing at the sky above the canopy. "Not sure how I feel about being someplace this built up, in case they come for another sweep to find places they didn't catch."  
  
Pete was still thinking about it when they were dropped off back at the parking lot, Patrick leaping to his feet to greet them while Joe remained where he had been sitting on the ground, beside him, squinting across the lot against the sun. He was still thinking about it as they set off back on the highway, his phone plugged into the USB port, cable stretched through to the back because Patrick in the front and Joe was finishing his turn at the wheel.  
  
There was still no signal, they were outside the limits of normal networks with the cliff on either flank, but as they approached Denver he began to wonder whether going back to the city was the right idea at all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Part 4  
**_Every wound can be forgotten in the right light.  
  
  
  
  
_ Patrick was glad just to hear the hum of the engine and feel the air from the open window buffeting his hair as he propped his head on his hand and closed his eyes. Pete had asked for the radio to be switched to a station that ran news, and he really wasn't interested, he was just looking forward to getting home. It was probably going to be at least another sixteen hours in the car, but the faster they drove and the fewer stops they made, the sooner it would be.  
  
Through the pink hue of the sun on his closed eyelids, he revisited the morning's events, visualising the worried blue of Joe's eyes as they turned to each other after the others disappeared behind the trees at the side of the highway. It was just them, now. If something went wrong, it really would be just the two of them, and what then? Neither of them were natural survivalists.  
  
He'd woken up to find Joe's arm curled around him, fingers twisted in his t-shirt, with his jacket over them both. His belly was pressed to Patrick's back, just like it would have been one summer over a decade ago. For a split second he'd wondered where he was,  _when_  he was. The reality had settled on him heavier than the weight of Joe's arm across his chest, but he left it there, stayed still and let himself relax into it while Joe slept on. He didn't close his fingers around Joe's to keep his hand there, but he stroked them lightly, once, remembering the first time, all those years before. How his heart had skipped when he'd opened his eyes to the early morning light, to find Joe's face pressed into the back of his shoulder, half-laying on him where he'd rolled forward in the night and Joe had obviously followed. There had been a warmth coursing through him, then, hope and self-conscious teenage lust; now it was more like guilt for holding on and holding out for the prospect of something that hadn't really meant anything to begin with.  
  
They hadn't acknowledged it, once the others had left to find gas, because when did they ever? Joe took his case from the car and went to wash up in the restrooms, leaving Patrick to sit cross-legged on the picnic table, soaking in the morning sunlight through the conifers, drinking warm bottled water with a slightly sticky Powerbar for breakfast. He hadn't expected anything, not really. He and Joe had a long history of touchy-feeliness, but just for a moment he'd wanted to say something. He hadn't, though. He'd just waited for his turn, wondering how long it could possibly take.  
  
But now they were back on the road, signs for Boulder and Denver their first real indication of civilization since Las Vegas, yesterday. Only Denver was just as quiet as everywhere else. They didn't see any sign of the military there, either, except the abandoned cars were lined up, some trashed, along the side of the highway, cleared solely for them to pass through, it seemed.  
  
It was afternoon by the time Denver fell away behind them, leading them back out onto a windswept plateau that seemed to stretch forever into the distance. He couldn't imagine it ever ending, that for all these miles they were ever getting closer to home. It didn't help that the June days were long and the sun never seemed to sink any further.  
  
When they stopped at a Flying J just across the stateline into Nebraska, the truck stop almost empty, Joe had been driving for almost five hours straight. His back was stiff and he'd started fidgeting and huffing, complaining that he needed something to eat that wasn't chips or protein bars, so they'd pulled in, knowing they'd need gas again imminently - the four large jerry cans Pete and Andy had brought back had just about filled the tank, but there was no way they could risk getting into that situation again.  
  
There was a small restaurant, almost dark but for one corner lit with glaring downlighters, piped music playing over the speakers giving it an eerie, artificial quality as they sat hunched over a table and ate tasteless waffles. He wondered if everything would feel like this, now. One long, Lynchian bleakness. Restaurants open out of habit, while people put on brave faces and served soulless repetition to numbed out patrons, too shellshocked to really care that the facon was dry as cardboard.  
  
Before they left, they picked up the gas, filling the jerry cans to make sure they could get as far as possible if the worst happened, then wandered into the store to look for alternative snacks and stock up on water.  
  
Pete shuffled up to stand beside him as he tried to decide between pretzel or peanut M&Ms, leaning his head on Patrick's shoulder and sighing. Patrick responded by leaning his cheek against the top of Pete's head and sighing back at him. It was all that was needed, a moment of unspoken solidarity. Pete had been subdued all day, like maybe reality and the fight of the night before were weighing on his mind. Patrick was glad, in a way. Every once in a while, it was good for Pete to be forced into a little self-awareness. He wasn't programmed like most people. He could read nearly everything about everyone else, pick up on what made them tick like some kind of profiler, and then generally make best use of it; but he couldn't seem to recognise his own influence for what it was. How his actions affected others, in any way but positively. That was what made it hard to be mad at him for long - it wasn't that he was wilfully mean or inconsiderate, he just had no capacity to imagine that his best intentions, rooted in the assumption that what was good for him was good for everyone else, might have unintended consequences. He mostly wanted to do the right thing, but 'the right thing' wasn't always universal.  
  
"Pretzel," Pete said, eventually, straightening up and pushing Patrick's glasses up his nose a little, so they were slightly too close and he had to adjust them anyway. "He likes those better."  
  
Patrick flipped him off as he slid around the side of the rack, holding his gaze mischievously, but it was still the pretzel bag he found himself taking to the counter.  
  
The hours slipped away, through the afternoon. He and Joe shared his candy with bottles of pop, in the back seat, while Pete took his first turn driving. He fell asleep with his head drooping and woke with Joe's jacket balled up and pressed between his cheek and his shoulder; absently he reached out to place a hand on Joe's thigh as he dozed with his head tilted against the window, and went back to sleep himself.  
  
\---  
  
It was about three in the morning when Joe climbed back behind the wheel. Patrick wanted to do the last stage back to Chicago, and he'd gotten enough sleep that he was okay to drive again when Andy called for a break. In the far distance, the first glow of dawn was breaking on the horizon, faintly green across the featureless Iowa plain. He'd never really recognised, until now, how flat so much of the country was, how endless the straight lanes of the highways seemed. Maybe before it hadn't mattered. Or maybe it was the last thing that mattered now.  
  
On his right, Patrick was gazing out of the window, silently, the first twitch of a familiar smile beginning to lift the corners of his lips. It was the smile Joe knew from years of being with him when he came home. A deep-seated relief at being back where he belonged, which built as he got closer, began to pass familiar place names and scenery - the giant fibreglass bull on the roof of a steakhouse that had been there since they first began touring, or the dazzling chrome of the Harley Davidsons on the forecourt of a specialist dealership with a tattoo parlour at the side, advertised with a neon heart reading 'MOM'.  
  
Along Interstate 80 outside Davenport, Patrick sat up, suddenly exclaiming, "Oh - hey, didn't we stop there, one time?" as they approached a rest area. Joe looked over at the yellow glow from the glass fronted shelter - it would have been hard to tell at this time of night, if he didn't remember it so well.  
  
"Yeah," he said, nodding and trying not to sound like he could recall every detail in an instant. "Do you need the bathroom?"  
  
"No, I just… I remember being there, is all."  
  
Joe glanced at him and kept on driving. It had been around this time in the morning then, too, the height of summer and the night before their last show. The air was sticky but there was a slight breeze in the trees and everyone had been a little raucous, glad to be heading back, buzzing after a good show. The rest of them had been climbing on picnic tables, hollering and roughhousing on the lawns out front, while he and Patrick used the last of the change in their pockets to stock up on cans of Cherry Coke and Pay Day bars in the vending machine room at the side of the complex. All but one wall was glass, and Patrick had shoved their purchases into his backpack and pulled him into the gap between two of the machines, out of sight from three angles, to catch one more chance to make out before they were back in Illinois with no more rest breaks to take. He was pretty sure that if they hadn't been interrupted by Mark and Daniel's laughter as they ran into the room and pulled the door closed so Pete couldn't follow, bracing their feet against the frame as they held on, one or both of them would have met the edge. As things turned out, neither of them had and it was the last time it ever happened, a bleak and frustrating prophecy of what was still to come.  
  
Thinking about it still hurt and he was hurting enough right now that he didn't want to revisit it, give himself something else to feel depressed about. He sure as hell didn't want to be back there, about to experience the single worst feeling of his life, up to that point.  
  
It wasn't long after that Patrick spoke again, confused, this time. "Do you see that?" he asked, as the automated streetlights of the city receded behind them, staring into the dark beyond the front beams.  
  
"See what?"  
  
"It… it kinda looks like something burning."  
  
Joe peered through the windshield and looked. Ahead of them, to the south east just off the expressway, there was a glow. It was muted, like embers in a hearth.  
  
"What do you think it is?"  
  
"I don't know, but it's kind of freaking me out."  
  
They slowed slightly as they got closer, realising there was something just to the side of the highway, almost burned out.  
  
Their voices woke Andy, who sat up, rubbing his face and squinted out of the window.  
  
"Shit!" he gasped, slapping at Joe's shoulder, almost unable to get the words out. "Shit, Joe, pull over! Pull over!"  
  
"What? Why?!"  
  
"It's a fucking plane crash, look!"  
  
A lead weight dropped into Joe's stomach and he could feel himself wanting to puke, suddenly, as Patrick whispered. "Oh God, no…"  
  
As quickly as he could, Joe pulled them over and Andy climbed out, running through knee-high grass at the side of the road, almost before the car had stopped. The sun wasn't really up, and in the twilight of the dawn, the dark silhouette of the huge tail fin stood out against the first of the light. This wasn't some private Cessna, it was an airliner, maybe an A380 if the proportions were anything to go by. The cockpit sat on its own, a few hundred yards away, the wings snapped and shining white on the ground. Acrid smoke and the odour of burned jet fuel and plastic surrounded them.  
  
"What do we do?!" Patrick asked. "Should we call 911?"  
  
"Who's gonna respond?" Pete asked, leaning back against the car with both hands splayed over his head. They'd seen no one for hours, on highways that ran straight past towns and cities, through the centre of Denver with not even the military that they'd promised would be there. "There's nobody here."  
  
"Then we should help."  
  
It was Joe who shook his head, looking at the wreckage grimly. "It's burned out. If anyone was in that, they're not saveable. Especially if it happened like two days ago…"  
  
"We can't just leave them!"  
  
"We're getting close to Chicago - the airport's on this side of town - they were probably taken before they ever hit the ground. Could even, like, explain why it crashed," Pete added, straightening up and walking out to stand beside Andy. "Either way, there's nothing we can do."  
  
"This is… horrible," Patrick murmured to himself, looking around. "Can't we at least check?"  
  
"Dude," Pete said, his voice soft, "if we're wrong, and there were people in that, you don't wanna see it. They'd all be dead already, anyway. Save yourself the torture, yeah?"  
  
"They could be people's families, Pete -"  
  
"A lot of families are gone now. It's too late for these ones."  
  
A few feet away, the sudden blue glow of Andy's phone was painfully bright in the half-light, 9-1-1 heading the screen. It rang and rang, the tone persistent and shrill. And then it cut off, unanswered.  
  
Joe could see the frown on Patrick's face as he looked across at the handset, before it disappeared into the dark as the screen blacked out. As his eyes grew accustomed to the limited light, he began to make out shapes across the ground, luggage and pieces of airliner scattered where they'd fallen. He hoped that's all it was, nothing more grizzly. "I guess that's your answer."  
  
For a few more moments they all stood together, contemplating the scene before them. It was the first real sign of disaster they'd encountered. No amount of abandoned vehicles and fender benders could compare to something like this. Something so harrowing, the horror and significance of it so ingrained in the national psyche. Without a further thought, he reached out and pulled Patrick to him, wrapping an arm across his shoulders and turning him away.

As they made their way back to the car, Pete stumbled, catching his feet on something that wound around his ankles in the long grass.  
  
"Fuck!"  
  
He caught himself on Patrick's shoulder and stooped to pick up whatever had tripped him, using the light on his phone to see it, and laughed darkly at the sight.  
  
It was a large, nylon flag - the star spangled banner, grubby from dust and smoke, but largely intact.  
  
"Found someone's souvenir," he said, shaking it out and holding it up to billow in the breeze.  
  
Reverently, Andy reached out and ran his fingers over the fabric. "I guess they thought they were going home."  
  
"Well, this is coming home with me."  
  
"I feel like maybe you should, like, leave that where you found it…" Joe told him, repelled by the thought, like they were grave robbing. It didn't matter that these people were probably never coming back, it wasn't theirs to take.  
  
"What for?"  
  
"Respect, maybe?"  
  
" _We're_  going home," Pete insisted, wrapping it across his shoulders like an olympic champion. "I'm gonna take this with me and fly it from my dad's yard in their honour. We're the survivors. I'm gonna do it for all the people that were in that thing, that aren't."  
  
\---  
  
Andy watched the others carefully as Chicago built itself up around them. Across from him, in the driving seat, Patrick was cheerful, at first, happy to see his beloved city as much as he would have been to see his mom. But he grew quieter as he drove on, taking them off the expressway at Rush and along Jackson Boulevard, towards the Sears Tower (no matter what else changed, it would always be the Sears Tower to them), past the occasional burned out shell of a food joint and more deliberate rows of double-parked cars and vans, in varying states repair.  
  
Pete's face grew stony as they went, his persistent frown tightening over his eyes, while Joe propped his head on his hand, fingers in his hair, softly muttering, "Fuck… fuck dude, this is fucking insane…"  
  
It was insane. It set the hair on the back of his neck on end, a chill up his spine as usually busy intersections sat empty and the lights remained on in empty stores and restaurants, no one around to turn them off. There had been a silent, collective agreement to head downtown, first, before getting back onto the Kennedy Expressway and heading home to the northern suburbs. This whole city was home to them - even to Andy, to a lesser extent. He'd grown up here, with them, with the other kids in the scene, playing shows to their friends at the Fireside Bowl and watching his own heroes play shows in the bigger venues in the city. They all needed to see what the old girl had become.  
  
The first people they saw were in marpat, standing at the intersection with S Canal Street, flagging them down as they approached the bridge.  
  
Obediently, Patrick pulled up alongside them and wound down the window. "Hey. Can I help you?"  
  
"Morning, sir. Can you tell me where you're headed, today?"  
  
"For a breakdown," Joe quipped, straightening up in his seat.  
  
"To tell you the truth, I don't even know. We just got home, y'know - we were out in, uh… we were in the desert when everything went down, we've been driving back for two days…"

"You live downtown?"  
  
"Not really, but…" Patrick glanced back at the others for some help and Pete obligingly stepped in, rolling down the passenger window to be heard.  
  
"We just wanted to see what happened down here, kind of. We've been on the road since Monday, wondering what we were like, coming back to, basically. We just wanna take a detour through the city and head back up to Wilmette, bro."  
  
"Um, I live basically in Boystown, actually,"  Joe corrected, earning himself a quickly suppressed smirk from the soldier.  
  
"Well, sir, there's not a whole lot to see."  
  
"For me, there is," Patrick said, sadly. "I don't know if it sounds crazy to you, but I just need to see the place. I need to know it's still here, y'know?"  
  
"We're not here for the loot, if that makes you feel any better," Joe added. "We're actually millionaires already."  
  
Andy kicked the back of his seat. "'Cause that doesn't sound like something a looter would say."  
  
The soldier leaned into the window a little, resting a hand on the roof and looking around at them, a motley crew of exhausted, unwashed guys in the same clothes they'd packed for Vegas, and nodded. For a moment, he stepped away from the vehicle to confer with his buddy and speak into his radio, then he returned and rested both arms on Patrick's window.  
  
"There are checkpoints throughout the city. Head straight down, across the bridge, they're not gonna let you along the Mile, but you can take Lake Shore all the way north."  
  
"Thanks," Patrick nodded, but his shoulders sagged a little. He wouldn't be able to see much from there, and it was obvious he was disappointed.  
  
The soldier nodded and stepped back, waving them on. "Stay safe."  
  
The streets were deserted. Andy had never seen the place like this before, even after being turfed out of places at four in the morning. The weirdest thing was that they were nearly untouched. Like some kind of set for a film, waiting for hordes of zombies to begin staggering around the corner. People really were just gone. Aside from the occasional grill fire in a restaurant, nothing was damaged the way they were told it would be, in movies. It didn't look as though rampant looting had happened, because all of the windows of stores were intact. It was like everyone had just evaporated - which, in a way, they had.  
  
He didn't realise that Patrick was crying until they stopped at a red light on the intersection, the sunlight glistening on the water of Monroe Harbour with gentle ripples between the lines of trees. Suddenly, Joe reached out and placed a hand on the back of Patrick's neck, rubbing and murmuring, "C'mere, dude…" He unbuckled himself and shifted to the edge of the passenger seat to lean across and hug him tenderly, his chin resting on the top of Patrick's head, making soothing noises.  
  
"The light changed, I have to go…" Patrick said, sniffing and wiping his face on his sleeve, clearing his throat wetly.  
  
"For who? It's just us and Call of Duty, now, dude. Take a minute."  
  
Pete leaned in from the back seat, reaching around both sides of the headrest to knead at Patrick's shoulders. "You got this, Cookiejar."  
  
"Why don't we take a break and park up around here, someplace?" Andy suggested. "Maybe we could all use a minute."  
  
They settled on the yacht club parking lot, a little rectangular promontory on the edge of the harbour, where the familiar towers of downtown overlooked the parks, and the river flowed out between them into the lake. A gentle summer breeze carried across the water, as they got out and stood on the jetty; silent, save for Patrick sniffing and wiping at his face as he leaned against Joe, tucked under a comforting arm while Pete wrapped fingers around his, almost for stability.  
  
There were no planes overhead, no traffic on the normally-busy eight-lane highway running along the shore, no joggers or motorboats or cyclists. It was just them, and the lapping of the water and the rustling of the leaves on the trees along the sidewalk. Even the air felt too clear - empty of the pollution they were used to.  
  
It made him suddenly, deeply, irrationally angry.  
  
"I am so fucking… Fuck, I am just so fucking  _mad_ , right now."  
  
The others looked at him as he kicked at a bottle cap lying at his feet and sent it skittering along the ground.  
  
"How was this fucking possible, man? How did we not see them coming? How did we not have a way to stop this? I mean, there are fucking  _films_  about this stuff! Couldn't some asshole just run with those ideas or something? Why didn't they just build a fucking laser or send up a fleet or - I don't even know! It's not my job to know! Whose fucking job was it to stop this shit happening?!"  
  
"Dammit, Phil," Pete said, flatly, "you had one job."  
  
Patrick spluttered a snotty-sounding laugh.  
  
"I'm fucking serious, Pete!"  
  
"That's kind of what makes it funny, man."  
  
"No! Because you don't fucking get it! I wasn't prepared for this - I thought… I thought when it happened I'd have  _people_  with me - "  
  
"Are we not people?" Joe asked, sounding typically affronted.  
  
"- people who knew the plan, people who trained for this - only not this, because we have all the shit we need to get by, but not in the world we live in, now! Who the fuck needs banks when there are no stores open to buy anything? What use will the internet be, when there's nobody left to update it?"  
  
"Well, I mean, like, reference and stuff, I guess?" Pete offered.  
  
"You are missing the fucking point!"  
  
"There is no point," Joe shrugged, his fingers digging more tightly into Patrick's shoulder as he did so. "Isn't that the thing, now? There's, like, no point to anything at all. We just exist. All the people we loved - they're gone, dude. Later, we're gonna, like, get home and see how pointless it all really is, and that's gonna blow your fucking mind."

\---  
  
Before they left, standing by expensive boats, looking up at the high rise buildings and out to the lake, Pete slipped back a few paces and snapped a picture of the three of them, dressed almost entirely in black, Patrick and Joe still propped against each other, Andy sitting on the edge of the dock with his head in his hands. He posted it to Instagram with just one word.  
  
_Home?  
  
_ He'd had signal, on and off, for hours. He'd been waiting for the pings. But they were few and far between, now. It felt like the world was holding an extended moment of silence, in remembrance.  
  
He couldn't check his notifications while he was driving, Andy would only yell at him. He'd been determined to take responsibility for the last leg home, because he'd always been the one at the front, the one who handled situations and took the hit. Andy was his wingman, while the other two sat in the back, not even bothering to put on their seatbelts so they could huddle together, Patrick's knees pulled up with his feet on the hump of the central console. Pete wasn't sure whether he was asleep on Joe's shoulder, or if he'd just closed his eyes so he didn't have to see any more of his city as a ghost town. Joe was thumbing through his phone, holding it above Patrick's head a little and close to his face. Hiding something, so Patrick wouldn't see if he opened his eyes. Any other day, he'd ask what kind of porn he was looking at, but he had just enough sense of self-preservation not to, today. Besides, he was frowning intensely, blinking and pink in the cheeks - something was up and he'd never find out what it was if he pissed Joe off before he could ask nicely.  
  
"Where do you wanna head, first?"  
  
"My mom and dad's place," Joe told him, absently.  
  
"What about Patrick?"  
  
"He's coming with me. I'll take him later. My mom's car is probably there."  
  
"Since when?"  
  
"Yesterday."  
  
"What, we're not all going together?" Andy asked. "I thought the whole point - "  
  
"We can't be everywhere at once, dude. You go with Pete, to his folks' place. I'll go with Patrick to ours. We can meet up later at Pete's or something. I need to go home."  
  
"Fine by me," Patrick murmured, without opening his eyes.  
  
Pete tried not to pout that Joe seemed to have claimed Patrick as his apocalypse buddy, and Patrick was apparently following his junk, rather than his loyalty to Pete, because he kind of didn't want to have to walk into the Trohman home and be there when Joe lost it. He was going to, he was pretty sure of it. His dad was his movie partner, he regularly flew home for the weekend so they could catch the latest geek picture together. He idolised his mom, too. If he got his sense of humour from his dad, his whole creative weirdness was from her. She was a free spirit, like some little liberal pixie who wanted her kids raised to run barefoot through the woods and make shit out of twigs, but compromised by sending them to private school and letting them do whatever they wanted on their own time. Pete was pretty sure his own mom wouldn't have let him go on tour at fifteen, especially not with an asshole like Pete apparently was. At fifteen, he was at Camp Fuck Up, getting the non-conformity kicked out of him.  
  
Pete loved his parents, but Joe completely adored his and Pete didn't blame him. In truth, he'd always thought they were the parents he deserved to have, ones he'd never have had to rebel against. Maybe his whole world would have been different, then.  
  
There was a moment of silence after Joe and Patrick climbed out of the car and made their way up the front steps to the Trohmans' front door. They both watched as Joe unlocked it with shaking hands, dropping his keys, and Patrick picked them up for him, handing them over and rubbing his back sympathetically.  
  
"We kind of need to keep an eye on the kids," Pete said carefully, waiting until Patrick turned to wave and closed the door behind them. "'Cause like… it's gonna go one of two ways…"  
  
He still thought of them as kids, compared to himself and Andy. They'd been kids when they first met, and he'd never been able to let go of that sense of being their role model, the leader of their little tribe, who was supposed to teach them things and act as pathfinder. But the truth was, Andy had always been better at it - the competent parent, while he fed them junk food and let them stay up late so he'd be the favourite.  
  
Andy looked at him sidelong. "Do we?"  
  
"You just saw them, dude. And yesterday morning."  
  
"Things are pretty fucked up, right now. If they get comfort from each other, good for them. But I'm not spooning you."  
  
"If that was all it was, it wouldn't be a thing, dude, but… I mean, you saw what they were like since we all got back together, right?"  
  
"That could just be because they realise they both messed up and they know they have to put in the miles to make things okay. It doesn't mean anything."  
  
"And that's true, or whatever, but it's not where Patrick's coming from."  
  
"So, where is he coming from?"  
  
Pete grimaced. It was okay to tell Andy, he figured, they both confided in Andy, it was only a matter of time before he knew. "Well, I mean, like… I think taking a timeout from each other, then spending a bunch of time together, kind of brought up a lot of weird feelings."  
  
"Right. But what do you actually  _know_?"  
  
"Let's just say, I think that on some level, Lunchbox is kind of relieved they're both sort of single again."  
  
"And he told you that? Two days after he lost his wife?"  
  
"Not in so many words, but yeah. He acknowledged it."  
  
"And does Joe know?"  
  
Pete shrugged. "I know you weren't there, but like, at my birthday thing, Elisa walked out because Ric was basically ignoring her to flirt with Joe. It was like he didn't even notice she was gone, dude. He ended up going home with Joe and Marie."  
  
"What - 'home' as in…  _home_? There's no way..."  
  
"I mean, he  _says_  they shared a taxi."  
  
"Then they probably shared a taxi, Pete! You're trying to make something out of nothing…"  
  
"It's not like it'd be the first time."  
  
"We all did stuff at seventeen, eighteen we wouldn't do now." Andy hesitated and smirked at him. "Except you. You'd still do all of it, probably."  
  
\---  
  
Joe had assumed that when he walked into his parents' house his first thought would be how empty the place felt, but for a moment his heart lurched at the sound of his father's favourite Thin Lizzy album playing from his study. There was a sudden burst of hope, instant and futile.  
  
"Dad?"  
  
He knew there wasn't going to be an answer, it would almost have scared him if his dad's voice had replied, but he couldn't stop himself. He half-ran down the hall to the door, grasping the frame to lean in and check. It was empty. His old hifi from when he was about fourteen was sitting on the desk, next to the Mac his mom had insisted that they buy a couple of years ago, after using Joe's. There was a lesson plan on the screen, something about pacemakers. He ran his hand over the back of the leather desk chair and pulled it aside so he could sink down into it, blinking rapidly to try to clear the salty film seeping across his eyes.

This was the last place he ever sat. The last thing he was doing before they took him was to teach aspiring doctors of the future. It made Joe proud to think of that, imagine him sitting there with his spectacles on, doing his half-competent touch-typing to  _Wild One_.  
  
He wiped away the droplet that slipped off his eyelashes with the palm of his hand, feeling disappointment and a sharp, stabbing grief blooming in his chest. He cast his eyes to the ceiling and tried to stop more tears from falling, trying to steady his breathing and swallow the lump in his throat. He wondered what his mom had been doing. There was a cup full of cold coffee on the little shelf next to the monitor, and he hoped that she'd brought it to him; that maybe they were talking, that she was telling him what she had planned for the day. That they were together when they were taken. His mom and dad were one of those couples he really thought would be happy and together forever. They had the kind of contented, co-operative relationship he'd aspired to, and had found with Marie.  
  
"You okay?" Patrick asked, appearing in the doorway, hugging himself. He hadn't shaved in a couple of days, and the first signs of sandy stubble were appearing. He was tired, too. Not the kind of tired that meant he needed a nap or an early night, just worn out. His eyes were dull and all his movements seemed a little heavier than normal.  
  
Carefully, he nodded. "Yeah, I guess… Are you?"  
  
On the way up from the city, Joe had thought that maybe he could help cheer him up, somehow - find those pictures of Elisa, now that he had access to the internet again. So, he'd logged into Marie's Facebook, because she had Elisa friended and he'd be able to view photos that he wouldn't otherwise. He just wanted to give him something to be happy about, to see him smile - or maybe see how genuine his smile was, after what Pete had told him under the streetlight in the mountains.  
  
There had been a little red bubble on the screen, when he opened the page, though, and for a minute he'd lost his breath, thinking someone was out there, someone had been trying to contact them. But when he opened messenger it was just a 'LOL' from her friend from college, sent Sunday night and probably seen, but not opened at the end of an exchange.  
  
Below it, though, was a conversation with Elisa. It wasn't overly weird, but she and Elisa weren't close - they didn't generally hang out, although they'd chat when they all got together. So, he'd clicked on it, curious, wondering if maybe they were talking about what happened at the restaurant - anything that would help him understand what was wrong, why Patrick hadn't said anything.  
  
  
**Elisa Yao Stumph  
** Thanks for bringing my husband home last night. Sorry if he third-wheeled your evening.

 

 **Marie Trohman  
** He didn't, we had fun. We always have time for Patrick. Xx

 

 **Elisa Yao Stumph  
** You guys are so sweet.  
Btw, you won't believe the funniest rumour I heard. A little bird was telling me that when they were kids, Joe had a little crush on Patrick.  
I didn't even know Joe went that way.  
I bet you're glad he has me, now you know that, right? lol x

 

 **Marie Trohman  
** You didn't know? Oops! I don't know if 'crush' is the word but I'm not sure if I should be the one to tell you the full story! Ask Patrick about it! Xx

 

_Seen 02/06/13_

 

There were no further replies. It didn't tell him enough, but it told him something he'd never imagined and yet never questioned - that Elisa knew something about what had happened, that he and Patrick shared a history before they met, but it wasn't Patrick who'd told her. He didn't know what to make of it. Was he afraid of what she'd think, or did it just not matter enough to be worth mentioning? They'd never talked about it themselves, but Joe had told Marie early on; confessional, getting to know each other's innermost secrets over late night phone calls across state lines on winter break, when he didn't have to see the look on her face. When he first met her, he was still hurt and confused by the way things had happened, he'd wanted someone removed from the situation to validate his feeling of being wronged. Telling her had contributed a lot to his getting over it, in so far as he ever had. Perhaps it just showed how little it had meant to Patrick that he hadn't felt the same need.  
  
Sitting there, in his parents' house, not really sure what to say, felt a lot like the first time they'd hung out alone after it happened. It had been awkward and heavy; he wasn't really sure what was going on, except he knew he didn't have the whole picture and he was afraid to ask for it.  
  
Patrick shrugged, his arms still wrapped across himself tightly, his lip sucked between his teeth, and nodded.  
  
"Do you wanna take a shower, or something?"  
  
It was the most helpful thing he could think of to ask. Patrick didn't have any clean clothes left in his suitcase, but he probably had something acceptable enough until they got to his house and picked up some fresh things.  
  
"Do I smell that bad?"  
  
"No, I just… I mean, I'm gonna take one, I thought maybe you'd want to."  
  
Patrick reddened a little and glanced away, like he still half believed Joe's parents were hanging around, somewhere.  
  
"Okay, sure. Thanks."  
  
"I'll get you a towel."  
  
While Patrick showered in the guest bathroom, Joe wandered around the house looking in all the rooms, just in case. In the den, he stood and studied the huge, framed collection of family photos. His little brother when he was three or so, caked in chocolate pudding while Joe sat innocently and immaculately clean beside him; his grandparents, twenty years ago, happy and smiling and holding hands at the beach - his pant legs rolled up to keep the sand and salt water off them… The colours were fading, now, turning it sepia. There was a picture of him and Marie, too, young and smiling for the camera, her head ducked into his shoulder so the only thing you could see was one sparkling eye and a huge smile under the hair falling across her face.  
  
He texted her, feeling stupid but not really knowing what else to do, saying,  _I miss you. Call me when you get this. Xx_  But knowing, in the pit of his stomach, that she wouldn't.  
  
He laid on his parents' bed for a little while, too, breathing in the lingering scent of the essential oils his mom wore. It evoked so many memories of being a small child, before Sam was born, cuddling up between his parents in their giant bed on Sunday mornings. Safe and protected. And they were gone, now, and the house was empty. A time capsule of memories and their lives, that they'd just stepped out of but couldn't come back to. He felt like Little Foot chasing shadows.  
  
There was food in the fridge still fresh, a freezer full of food that his mom had never got to use. It was surreal and upsetting, like they should be back from his grandma's any moment, but also a relief. At least they wouldn't starve, this week.  
  
It was as he was standing at the kitchen window, waiting for the coffee machine, that he heard a dog barking. For a moment, he thought of Ben, the family's Alsatian, who'd been sent to live with Sam in Indiana, a year ago, because his parents were getting older and didn't have the energy to keep up with him. But then something else dawned on him.  
  
What about the pets? When they took all the humans, did they take people's dogs and cats and betta fish and canaries, too? Or did they leave them, trapped and starving in millions of deserted homes?  
  
He felt sick.  
  
"Louis."  
  
Without thinking, he rushed into the guestroom, raving to Patrick about having to go to New York - now, tonight, immediately.  
  
Patrick blinked at him, his glasses on the comforter, his face now twice as red as it had been before, completely naked and awkwardly covering himself with a lilac towel.  
  
"Now?" he asked, making no real attempt to hide himself any further, strategically bunching one corner of it in front of his waist. He'd always been so self-conscious of his body, but losing some of the weight he'd been carrying had clearly changed something. Or perhaps it was like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand - he could probably barely see Joe without his glasses on.  
  
"Uh - sorry, I didn't, like…. but yeah." He wasn't sure where to look, whether Patrick would notice. They weren't the kind of friends who readily got naked around each other, they'd all been too awkward for that. "I just realised I need to go get Louis. I can't leave him there, he's already been alone nearly three days."  
  
"Tonight?"  
  
"I mean, I feel like yeah, I probably shouldn't waste any time. Little dude's probably freaking out and there's nobody to get him water or…"  
  
"Do you need me to come?"  
  
"No, I mean… we just got here. I'll leave you with Pete."  
  
"You can't drive twelve hours on your own, man, seriously."  
  
"I'll be okay."  
  
"Yeah, but I won't. I'm just gonna worry about you, dude. I'm coming. Although I should probably put on some clothes or something, first."  
  
Joe could feel his own face warming for a moment, guiltily, like Patrick had caught him out. "Sorry - sorry, yeah, you should. I like, I made coffee."  
  
Patrick smiled at him tiredly and leaned down to pick up his glasses. "Good, I think we're probably gonna need it."  
  
\---  
  
"You're what?"  
  
"New York. We're on the way to New York." Patrick could hear Andy's voice in the background, half yelling. "Tell him I know, but we needed to do this."  
  
There was a shuffling sound, and then Andy himself was on the line. "You are not doing this tonight, Stumph. I'm vetoing it! Turn around and get your stupid asses back here!"  
  
"We can't, we just passed South Bend, we've gone too far to turn back, now."  
  
"You cannot drive another twelve hours on no sleep!"  
  
"We'll take it in turns, it's… we'll be okay."  
  
"No. I'm not prepared to let you do this."  
  
"Dude, you can't stop us, right now. I know you want to, but Louis is still in the apartment and we can't let the little guy die a slow death alone - it's already been three days, y'know? We'll be safe, I promise."  
  
There was a muffled noise in the background, Pete's voice, and then a door slamming.  
  
"Wow. So, you kind of pissed off Hurley."  
  
"I know. But we'll be back in like 36 hours, dude, I promise."  
  
"We were supposed to stick together, you jerk."  
  
"I know. And we are, but right now, me and Joe need to help out Louis. It's too late for me to get back for Penny, but we can get to Brooklyn for him."  
  
Pete's voice on the line was sour and impatient. "Told you we should have gone to LA."  
  
The call was ended abruptly.  
  
Sighing heavily, Patrick lolled his head back against the headrest of Joe's mom's Sentra and looked over at him. "Well, that went as well as expected."  
  
Joe just nodded.  
  
It was already nearly nine. They'd eaten a hurried meal from frozen zipper bags of homemade pasta sauce and made half-assed sandwiches to take with them. They'd stopped by both their houses for changes of clothes, too - both partly mothballed while they spent their time out of state, so less strange to be in alone, but nonetheless distinctly empty. They drove as far down Lake Shore as they could, wanting to keep close to the familiar sights for as long as possible. The lights were still on in most of the skyscrapers, nobody around to turn them off any more than they were there to use them. It gave him chills, but he couldn't stop staring at them, towering beacons signalling a tragedy - or a searchlight calling people home.  
  
He didn't remember falling asleep. He'd put on  _Ride the Lightning_ , because he thought Joe might approve, and that it might keep them both awake, but when he blinked and squinted open his eyes, they were parked in a gas station, on a fluorescent forecourt, with nothing but darkness outside of the canopy. The little screen above the stereo said it was after one in the morning - Joe had to have been driving for six hours.  
  
"Pee time, man," his voice said gently, uncharacteristically low, as though he didn't have the energy to speak any louder.  
  
There was no music playing, now, just quiet. Crickets and a buzzing strip light and the hum of an aged aircon extractor. Normal sounds in the early hours of an abnormal Friday.  
  
"Why didn't you wake me?"  
  
"You started talking a bunch of delirious crap and fell asleep. But I'm gonna need you to drive for a while, dude, my knee's stiffening up."  
  
"Of course - sure. Are you doing okay?"  
  
Joe shrugged as he opened the car door and didn't answer.  
  
Back on the road, Patrick wound down the windows to let in some refreshingly cool air and told Joe to take a nap. He didn't know if he'd make any sense if they talked, was a little worried that somehow, without his fullest attention on keeping it buried, something would slip out - something that complicated things in a way they had no need to be, right now. He drove on into the dark, the sky black, twinkling velvet beyond the headlights. He wanted to appreciate it - to wake Joe and say, 'Hey - look how beautiful that is', while there were no trucks heading down the highway towards them, but he didn't. He was too conscious of the fact that each of those 400 billion stars were someplace that Marie might be, and he didn't want to draw Joe's attention to it. He was better off sleeping, forgetting that the woman he adored was gone, and Patrick was better off pretending that the knowledge that Joe would always wish he was out there with her didn't hurt more, even, than the knowledge that Elisa was out there, too.  
  
For a long way, he drove in silence, enjoying the sound of the tyres on the road and the rushing of air through the window. It was almost comforting, by now, proved that progress was being made, that their destination was getting closer. He saw barely anyone on the other carriageway, one truck which honked and flashed its lights in acknowledgement, a brief moment of human contact in an otherwise isolated landscape, deep in Pennsylvania.  
  
It startled him when Joe's voice, sounding fully awake and serious, asked, "Were you and Elisa breaking up?"  
  
"Why would you ask that?" Patrick frowned, looking over at him, twisted in his seat with one shoulder against the window, his cheek resting on the taut fabric of the seatbelt.  
  
Even in the dark, the moonlight glinting on his eyes made them blue; big and blue and still the most beautiful he'd ever known. He wanted to keep looking at them, captivated again, remembering the night he decided that the person he wanted to be, that tour, was someone who knew how it felt to be pinned to a van floor beneath them.  
  
He could feel Joe watching him and cast another glance in his direction, feeling prompted to elaborate on something he didn't even really understand. He hadn't thought things were so wrong they needed to split up - sure, he was going through some stuff and it was complicated and it hurt, but he was committed to his marriage. He'd wished idly for things to magically fix themselves without having to deal with all the risk and upset it'd involve, but he'd never been unfaithful. Although, talking with Pete had made him second guess that. Maybe he'd been blocking out what he didn't want to acknowledge.  
  
_You don't have to be fucking someone to be cheating with them, kind of.  
  
_ Was it possible to be cheating with one party completely oblivious? It didn't seem to make any sense. Joe and Marie had been so happy together, Patrick knew he didn't stand a chance. He wasn't trying for one, either, he just wanted to spend time with the person he felt like he'd almost lost. Hanging out with Joe made him happier than he'd felt in years, and he wanted more of that - more time, more attention, more intimacy on some emotional level - until he'd had to accept that the reason all of it mattered was because he was in love with him and deep down he wanted to be loved back, no matter how impossible that was.  
  
He'd really thought he'd been subtle about it, because Joe was his friend - one of his oldest, closest friends - it couldn't have been that much of a surprise to anyone that he wanted to invest time in working out their problems after so many years.  
  
But maybe it was. Maybe it had been obvious to everyone else, and maybe Joe knew, too, and had politely ignored it. Or maybe he was just tired and paranoid and all of this was getting to him.  
  
"I guess… I mean, we... 'fighting's' not the right word, y'know? She wasn't totally into me coming out to Vegas, and I couldn't figure out why, but maybe she just knew, or something… Maybe she had a sense that this was gonna happen."  
  
"What was going to happen?"  
  
" _This_. The end of the world as we know it."  
  
"Please. You didn't marry Nostradamus."  
  
Patrick adjusted his grip a little, his palms sweaty. "Then I don't know. Maybe she just wanted me to stay home."  
  
"But at, like...at Pete's birthday thing…"  
  
"I told you, she was tired. And I mean, couples go through stuff, right? That doesn't mean we would have broken up if this didn't happen. I mean, we just got married, dude, I… I wouldn't let it fall apart so soon."  
  
Or maybe he would, at the first hint that Joe was receptive of his feelings. It wasn't like he hadn't thought about it, locked in his studio when she was asleep, ashamed but exhilarated by the scenarios he pictured. A dozen ways Joe would come to him, telling him what a mistake they'd both made, promising to work things out, to make up for all the lost time. It was embarrassing to think about, now, sitting in Cathie's car, driving him home to the apartment Joe had lived in with the wife he was devoted to and the pup they shared.  
  
"Why didn't you tell me?"  
  
His heart skipped a beat as he glanced across at him in alarm, wondering for a horrifying second if he'd said something aloud. "What?"  
  
"That things weren't okay with you and her."  
  
"Oh… I mean, I guess I thought they were. It's not like I was going to leave or anything."  
  
"I just thought we shared stuff, now…" There was a slight accusatory tone in Joe's voice, hurt, like he thought things were being kept from him - which they were, but not what he thought.  
  
"We do, man… It's just that I dunno… I guess to me, there wasn't anything I could say about that. As far as I knew, we were doing okay. Sometimes, life's just complicated. We don't all get to have perfect marriages to our perfect soulmates…"  
  
For a moment, Joe was quiet, then he shifted a little to sit upright. "No relationship's perfect, dude, everyone has their moments."  
  
"Yeah?" Patrick asked, swallowing, guiltily hopeful that he was about to hear things weren't as wonderful as he'd imagined. "So, what's going on for you?"  
  
It look a minute, but eventually Joe shrugged and said, "Before you called - like, late last summer - we said we'd start trying for a kid, right? She didn't want to wait too long, because she had this idea that, like, if we wait until we were in our thirties, or whatever, she won't have the energy to be the awesome mom she wants to be, basically. But then all the stuff happened, and you said that you like, needed the band to get back together, and everything, so… we stopped trying. And I mean, she totally supported it and everything, but… I don't know that she totally forgave me, yet, for choosing you and like, the band, over having a family with her."  
  
Patrick's head swam, suddenly giddy, part excited that Joe had chosen him, part disappointed to hear that they were planning a family because all that did was illustrate how settled they were. "Joe, I…"  
  
"I figure it turned out for the best, actually…"  
  
"You do?"  
  
"Yeah," he nodded, looking down at his hands and twisting his wedding ring. "At least this way, I only lost my wife."


	5. Chapter 5

**Part 5  
** _ I was all of the things that you always dreamt and then never did _

  
  


It was light by the time they pulled out of the tunnel onto Manhattan Island. In some places, single lanes were open, abandoned cars stretched in double rows, where they'd been left at lunchtime on an ordinary weekday. Checkpoints, just like Chicago, were stationed at intersections. It was the most authentically apocalyptic thing about any of it. He half-expected them to see the reanimated corpses of the millions of New Yorkers who should be here, staggering across his path, salivating mindlessly for any living flesh. But there was nothing. Empty streets and the occasional armoured vehicle. A news crew interviewing someone in fatigues on a street corner.  
  
They'd kept the radio off. Until they were telling him that they'd found where everyone was taken and were launching a rescue mission, he didn't want to hear what the government had to say. He just wanted to block out what detail he could and focus on his current mission.  
  
Patrick was drowsy in the passenger seat, he'd gotten quiet somewhere in east Pennsylvania and Joe had let him sit, feeling the weight of responsibility growing in his stomach, afraid that he'd get home to find the one living creature he was responsible for had died alone from dehydration in a fifth floor apartment. Dogs didn't belong in apartments. His father had told him that over and over. Dogs needed gardens and walks and space to just be dogs. If he'd had a garden he would have had a doggy door to get outside, to find things to drink, even if Louis hated walks more than he hated baths. His little Frenchie legs didn't need the kind of freedom that the dogs his parents liked did. All he needed was scratches behind his ears and kibble.  
  
"Maybe we should park on the street," Patrick said, leaning against his window to gaze up at the 1930s apartment building Joe lived in, as they rounded the corner at the end of its block. "I mean, what if the electric goes out and we can't leave the parking garage?"  
  
"Well, by that logic, you're gonna walk up five floors, because we're not using the elevator."  
  
The white and black marble lobby was cool and silent, the stairwell seemed almost endless from the bottom, and for the first time he was glad they'd missed out on the first apartment they'd hoped to buy, on the fifteenth floor. His legs grew heavier with each step, after the third floor. He never used the stairs - he couldn't be sure he'd ever actually walked up them in the two years they'd lived there - but he was halfway to the fourth floor when he heard it. A soft, lonely whine and a little yelping bark. It was unmistakeable. He started running, Patrick determinedly dragging at the rail to help haul his tired legs up behind him, trying to keep up.  
  
"It's okay, little dude," Joe called up ahead of them, his keys digging in his hands. "I'm here. I'm here."  
  
He'd barely opened the apartment door when two little grey feet were pawing at his knees, excited barks greeting him with a viciously wagging stump of a tail.

"Hey, little lumpy guy," he said, scooping the flailing animal and holding him tight to his chest, not minding for once if he used his butt-cleaning device to lick all over his face. "You been looking after the joint while dad was away, huh?"  
  
It hit him all of a sudden, a ton of bricks to the chest that winded him and left him unable to stop a tsunami of tears spilling down his face. He was sobbing, his nose pressed into his dog's shoulder, barely over the threshold. Louis was all the family he had left. His parents were gone, Sam was gone, Marie, he now knew - with greater clarity than he'd ever imagined possible - was gone. His whole life, as he knew it, was gone. All he had left was here right now.  
  
"Hey… let's go inside, dude, c'mon," Patrick said, breathlessly, wrapping his arm around him and guiding him carefully into the apartment. "Come sit down."  
  
Louis gave a wriggle and leapt down from his arms, trotting down the hall and then turning back to bark at him, while Joe let Patrick envelope him in a soothing hug, rubbing at his back as he pressed his face into his neck, his shoulders shaking.  
  
They stood there together until Louis ran back up to their feet and barked insistently.  
  
"Is your dog secretly Lassie?" Patrick asked, as Joe straightened up, wiping his face on his t-shirt and tried to swallow more sobs. He had things to do, like feeding him and making sure he got a drink of water, after going without for days.  
  
"No, he just owns the place."  
  
Louis ran off again, stopping inside the kitchen door and then turning back, waiting. On the black and white chequerboard floor, at deliberate intervals, were several small piles of poop. Louis stood next to them and whined, grimacing guiltily.  
  
"I think someone wants you to clean up."  
  
"No, he's apologising," Joe told him, crouching down to scratch the top of the little dog's head. "He's making sure I know he wasn't hiding it and being a little jerk, but he had no choice. It's okay, lil'buddy. I know. Thank you for not crapping on her artisan rugs."  
  
In the corner, a bag of kibble twice Louis's size had been gnawed open, much more missing than should have been, if he'd been given regular meals for the last few days.  
  
"Took the chance to binge, huh, little guy?" he said, sniffing and rubbing his nose with his wrist. But when he straightened up, he saw it - her phone in the kitchen sink, dry except for a spilled glass of what must have been juice, laying where they fell from her hands at the window. He could feel the lump growing in his throat again as he picked it up. The battery was dead, so he couldn't even see who else had been trying to reach her - if anyone had. It seemed increasingly unlikely. He put it in his pocket, breathing carefully to avoid getting choked again, and filled Louis' water bowl, setting it down on the floor in time to watch him jog past Patrick and across the hall to the bathroom. "Dude, the water's here…"  
  
Patrick stepped back to lean in, and burst into laughter, jarring in the quiet and the heavy atmosphere of the empty apartment. "I think I know how he's doing so well… That's gross, Louis, little guy."  
  
"Oh... fuck's sake… Is he drinking from the toilet?"  
  
"Yep."  
  
Joe stepped carefully onto safe spots of floor and stood at the bathroom door, hands on his hips while Louis lapped at the bowl from the basket of bathroom tissue next to it. "Good job, Dog Grylls. That's pretty disgusting."  
  
"At least he made it… probably what kept the little dude going."  
  
Sighing, Joe picked him up again and made his way to the living room - immaculately tidy, other than one expensive scatter cushion shredded on the couch. In the bedroom, though, on Louis' deep blue cushion bed, was her old DePaul sweatshirt, the favourite one she wore around the house, that she'd owned longer than they'd been together. She wore it all the time - there was no way she'd have given it to him, so he must have taken it, comforted by her scent on the fabric.  
  
He wasn't the only one who missed her, and that was both reassuring and heartbreaking. He sank down on the edge of the bed, Louis still clutched in his arms, whining, and was grateful when Patrick carefully reached in and pulled the door closed.  
  
\---  
  
Sitting on the couch in Joe's apartment with his head in his hands, Patrick examined how he felt, why going back to their home in Chicago hadn't affected him the way being here affected Joe. Perhaps it was because that wasn't their primary home. They only lived there part of the year, anyway, Elisa preferred LA and all of his work was down there when it wasn't in New York. Or maybe he was just a terrible person.  
  
It felt weird to know that this was the first time he'd seen Joe's apartment, in these circumstances. He'd been in New York so many times while the band was on hiatus and he'd only tried to catch up with him once, but he and Marie had been back in Chicago. Even when they'd played there in spring - right there, in Brooklyn - there hadn't been time to come over and visit, but only because he'd made sure that was the case. He'd felt a little awkward with Marie, for the first few weeks after he realised how he felt, like somehow he was being two-faced for liking her and being friendly with her, when in truth he wished her husband would leave her. She didn't deserve that, she was an amazing person and she'd been so good for Joe, so grounding and loving. Exactly what he'd needed when he was at his worst.  
  
He didn't know that Joe would ever get over losing her. He couldn't blame him, either, not surrounded by their wedding photos - she looked like a 1940s starlet, he looked like he'd won the lottery - and their collection of Stuff, most of which he could hardly place as belonging to either one of them.  
  
But sitting there feeling sorry for himself while Joe hid in their bedroom wasn't helping anybody, so he got to his feet, wiping his hands on his jeans, and made his way to the kitchen to clean up.  
  
By the time he was done, the door still hadn't opened, so Patrick did what he hoped was the least intrusive thing, and went to explore their guestroom-come-studio-come-geekstore. All of the toys he remembered from Joe's bedroom when they were kids were carefully lined up on shelves, surrounded by guitars and as much analogue kit as would fit into the rest of the space around an extendable daybed and a shelf full of old comics. It was distilled Joe, boxed up in a familiar, nostalgic package and it was comforting. It reminded him of all those years, the good ones, when he was happy with Anna, but still casting him reminiscing glances when he stumbled out of his room in the old apartment, early in the morning.  
  
On one of the shelves were the old scrapbooks Joe kept when they first started out. He'd catalogued everything, methodically, ticket stubs and photographs and access passes and sections of map they'd used to mark out where they were due each night of every tour. He'd taken a bunch of photos all the time - fancied himself as a photographer if the band didn't work out - not that Joe ever believed the band wouldn't work out, he was the only one who'd ever been certain of it. He'd always teetered on a tightrope between obsessive enthusiasm and debilitating pessimism, it was just the way he was. Lacing every eventuality with equal parts mathematical probability and irrational belief that a miracle would happen that saw them through - or a cataclysm would occur that took them all down with it.  
  
He could have used some of Joe's crazy optimism, just then; a way to believe that when the dust settled, when they'd all come to terms with their losses and the wide, empty world they lived in, now, maybe they'd find something good in it all, together.  
  
There were photos in the scrapbooks that he had no recollection of. Sitting in the backs of vans, or outside venues. Some of Patrick looking vaguely uncomfortable with things being lit on fire, one of a group of them outside the Knights of Columbus hall, him and Joe on the left, one edge cropped off, just one disembodied arm slung around Patrick's neck, long and thin. He blinked at it, wondering if perhaps it had been someone they were no longer friends with - and then he realised it was. It was someone he sure as hell wasn't friends with, anymore - he recognised her watch - it was Anna. A perplexed frown tugged down his eyebrows. Perhaps there just hadn't been room on the page. Or perhaps he'd cut her out after she'd cheated on Patrick, in which case, bless his solidarity. Joe was such a good friend - it was the sort of thing he'd do in a fit of infuriated pettiness.  
  
Maybe he'd ask him about that, later. They could go through the old scrapbooks and laugh at how dorky they looked, and think about those good times - before all of this happened, before Marie or Elisa, or Anna, when it was just them and everything was fun, still. Maybe it would be nice - maybe they'd bond over it, reminiscing, and Joe would be able to put some of the hurt to the back of his mind for a little while, and not think about her.  
  
But more importantly, maybe he needed a hug right now, and maybe Louis needed to get out of the apartment for the first time in days, maybe Patrick needed to take responsibility for a change and do what he could to think of the practicalities.  
  
He made his way down the corridor to the bedroom, listening to see if Joe sounded upset and would be better left alone. Everything was quiet, so he knocked softly and opened the door a little.  
  
Joe was sitting with his knees drawn up, on what Patrick assumed was her side - the bedside table had a pretty, framed picture of the two of them beaming into the camera and a book on feminist art and design; the other had a picture of Louis, three graphic novels and a stash box. He was clutching something in his arms - it looked like a sweater - and the pup was snuggled up against his hip. His eyes were pink and puffy, and his curls mussed up, like he'd scraped his hands through them in despair. He'd taken out his contact lenses and put on his glasses, too, making him look younger, even though he'd worn them even less frequently when they were kids.  
  
"Hey, you doing okay?" he asked, gently. It was pretty obvious he wasn't, but what else could he say?  
  
Joe closed his eyes for a second and shrugged, but uncurled himself a little as if inviting him in. Patrick kicked off his shoes and climbed onto the mattress beside him, sitting against the headboard and letting Louis climb onto his lap as Joe shifted nearer and rested his head almost on Patrick's chest.  
  
"She's gone."  
  
Patrick curled an arm around his shoulders and lightly scratched under the hair at the back his neck. "I know. I'm sorry, dude." _I'm so sorry_.  
  
"I like… I knew she was, but I just…"  
  
"Yeah…" He wanted to say, _I understand - I felt the same when I went back to our place_ , but he hadn't. He'd felt numb, just as he had for most of the past few days, except where Chicago and Joe had been involved. Removed from everything that wasn't directly connected to the life he knew ten years ago, before the band had really taken off, before his world - his real world, not the things or the lifestyle he had in LA - had gotten out of his control. "Do you need to talk about it?"  
  
Joe sniffed and rubbed his nose on his wrist. "It's not like it's gonna help."  
  
"It might make you feel a little better…"  
  
"Probably not."  
  
"Okay," Patrick shrugged. He was being contrary, so maybe he was going to be okay. He settled down and held him a little tighter, kissed the top of his head tenderly. "At least we still have each other, right? I'm not gonna go anywhere… Although, I was thinking, maybe I could take Louis out for a walk in the park across the street, or something?"  
  
Joe gave a snort. "He likes walks like Andy likes crack."  
  
"Well, yeah, but I bet he's kind of sick of being inside for three days, right? And he probably needs to pee."  
  
"Maybe."  
  
"I can duck out for a half hour and give you some time to yourself, if you want?"  
  
"No," Joe said, too quickly. "No, if you're going out, I'll come."  
  
"Are you sure?"  
  
"Yeah. Maybe I need a minute, too. Definitely need a smoke..."  
  
Joe was apparently right about Louis hating walks. He got as far as the bench about fifty yards from the gate and sat his butt down on a patch of grass and refused to go any further.  
  
"See?"  
  
Patrick snorted. "Yeah. He's as stubborn as you are."  
  
They sat together on the seat while Louis decided he'd made his point and snuffled around the ground around them and Joe rolled himself something to smoke.  
  
"Thank you for coming with me."  
  
"Hm?" Patrick asked, pulling his eyes from the manicured lawns and the rolling slopes, dotted with trees. It was expansive and peaceful and hard to reconcile as being in the midst of a busy place like Brooklyn, even if Brooklyn wasn't busy now and may never be again. "Oh… it's nothing, man, I wouldn't dream of letting you come out here alone… It's kind of creepy even though there's two of us."  
  
"They never deal with this in the movies."  
  
"With what?"  
  
"The idea that, like, everything might be deserted. It's always kind of like, zombies or fucking… asteroids smashing the place up, or something… They never deal with stuff just being normal, except for like, everything being fucked up."  
  
"I guess there's not much of a story in that… In two guys just sitting some place and watching the sun go down with a lazy little guy who won't go walkies…"  
  
"Actually, you know what this is?"  
  
"Not really, I mean..."  
  
"This is the end credits."  
  
"Oh!" Patrick laughed, forgetting for a moment that it wasn't the end credits, it was real. It was happening. "It's _totally_ the end fucking credits!"  
  
"Like, we already fought off the alien fucks and now we're, like, looking into the future or some implausible, metaphorical crap. We've kind of just got to hook up silhouetted against this pretty little scene -" he gestured with his joint "- except there's half a broken up CGI spaceship in the background, and it's a fucking James Cameron classic, dude…"  
  
Patrick's laughter trailed off awkwardly, wondering if there was some other point that Joe was trying to make. "Yeah… Yeah, I guess."  
  
"Shame it's not… I always wanted to be a Strong Female Lead."  
  
"I'd just be the dude who makes shitty decisions and basically deserves it when he dies in the first thirty minutes."  
  
"No, shh," Joe argued, "you're in the credits, man, you're like, the nerdy guy come good. You're like -"  
  
"Elijah Wood as a fifteen year old in Deep Impact."  
  
"That wasn't James Cameron, that was Mimi Leder and I only know that because I thought it was cool when I was thirteen and my mom kept pointing out a Jewish woman made it."  
  
Patrick smiled a little, watching Joe lose himself in his film-buff _Well, actually-ing_ , like nothing had happened and he wasn't distraught over the loss of his wife, an hour ago. "Either way, that future sounds kind of nice…" Joe glanced at him behind his glasses, looking like he wasn't sure if Patrick realised what he'd implied. "The good one, I mean. The one where it's peaceful and we get another day…"  
  
"But we get the World's End ending, right?"  
  
"Yeah," Patrick smiled, half-heartedly. He hoped they didn't get that ending, he didn't want to be Nick Frost existing alone in a dystopia with Pete chasing his second childhood who-knew-where, all his friends lost to him.  
  
Joe took a deep drag and exhaled it slowly. "Thank you, dude."  
  
"For what?"  
  
"For being kind of like my anchor and keeping me from floating off up my own asshole of self-pity."  
  
"I think, right now, we're all kind of up our own 'assholes of self-pity', dude."  
  
"You're not."  
  
 _I am_ , Patrick thought, _just not for the reason you think I ought to be._ Wearily, he reached out to take the joint from his hand, muttering, "Aren't I?" Joe let him, watching as he studied the rolled paper. Patrick thought about smoking it, wondering if it would do for him whatever it did for Joe that made him want to keep doing it, and decided if it put him in the same kind of mood as Joe it wouldn't be any use to either of them. He held it out for him to take back and Joe smirked, tiredly.  
  
"Thought I might actually get to see you high, for a second."  
  
"Nah. One of us has to know what the fuck's going on, right?"  
  
Whatever it did for him, it seemed to make him less distressed.  
  
"I figure when we get back, I should look at packing up stuff I need, take it back home."  
  
Patrick nodded, thoughtfully, looking at him. He hadn't missed that Joe called Chicago 'home', rather than New York, as he had been recently. "I can help, if you want."  
  
Joe echoed the movement and patted him on the leg. "Thanks, dude. I kind of don't know it until I see it, but you can hang out, if you want."  
  
"Oh, it's okay," Patrick snorted, "I'll just go amuse myself in the bar down the street or something…"  
  
There was a heaviness in Joe's smirk. "That's sort of weird, right?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"That we might never go to a bar or a restaurant or a museum or a supermarket, like, ever again…"  
  
"Yeah… yeah, it is."  
  
They sat in quiet contemplation for a long time before Joe finally asked, "You hungry or anything, man?" leaning down to scratch Louis behind the ears.  
  
Patrick opened his mouth to decline - he didn't feel much like eating - but his stomach gave a noisy rumble in response and Joe snorted and stood up, stretching until his back clicked and reaching out a hand to pull Patrick to his feet.  
  
"C'mon, nerdy hero dude. This is our shwarma moment."  
  
\---  
  
Something was off, with Patrick, and Joe didn't know what it was - it could have been a multitude of things, at this point. He still didn't really get what was going on with Patrick and Elisa, but he wasn't dealing with it right, and he wasn't his usual, optimistic self, either. All he could think to do was feed him, because that was what he'd always done - taken him to the burger place a block away from the apartment, shown up in his hotel room with twelve kinds of Japanese Kit-Kats… But he couldn't order take out or go to the store and get something that came with a side of diabetes, now. All of that was done. He just had to rely on what was left in the freezer.  
  
Patrick watched him as he rifled through the cupboards and refrigerator, finally pulling out a couple of frozen pizzas and switching on the oven. Patrick didn't bother reminding him that pepperoni wasn't vegetarian, but he was so polite Joe could have served him raw roadkill and he'd have accepted it graciously.  
  
"I just realised you cleaned up, dude," Joe said, when he'd closed the oven door and turned around to lean against the sink, looking around the room. "You didn't have to do that…"  
  
Patrick shrugged and nodded as he helped Louis scramble up onto the chair beside him. "I didn't have anything better to do… And I mean, I know what it's like to have a dog in the house, right?"  
  
Joe nodded, carefully. He hadn't even thought about Patrick's dog, or Pete's, really. "I'm sorry about Penny."  
  
"I feel kind of awful about the poor little thing getting left behind, but y'know, she wasn't my dog - not like you and this guy."  
  
For a few moments they sat in heavy silence, contemplating the bleak and frightened end all of those abandoned pets must be meeting, now.  
  
Eventually, Patrick asked, "What time do you think we'll leave, tomorrow?"  
  
"Why? D'you have plans, or something?" Joe retorted, with an attempt at a smile.  
  
"Funny. No, obviously, I just thought it would be good to get back to the guys, y'know?"  
  
"You heard from Pete?"  
  
"Well, no, I don't have a phone, remember?"  
  
"Crap. Yeah." Joe thought for a moment and then straightened up. "Wait a sec." He left the room and Louis immediately lifted his head up a little and whined, getting ready to scramble back down and follow. He could hear Patrick soothing him from the guestroom. He knew he had what he needed somewhere, he'd thought of it yesterday, laying on his parents' bed. It was something good that he could do for him, and it meant nothing, really, in the greater scheme of things, but it was a way of trying to ease his misery a little.  
  
When he returned a minute later, he pushed his old iPhone 5 and a charger into his hands, resting on the table. "I had it jailbroke for Marie when she dropped hers."  
  
"Are you serious?" Patrick asked, but he was already pulling his shattered handset out of his pocket.  
  
"Yeah. You're kind of vindicating me keeping a bunch of totally necessary stuff that no one believes is useful."  
  
His voice faltered a little as he said, " _Thank you_ , dude… I can't even…"  
  
Joe dropped a hand onto his shoulder and rubbed, comfortingly. "Anything for my favourite little dude."  
  
Sighing, Patrick propped his head against Joe's belly, and looped his arms around his waist. He let his fingers stroke comfortingly at Patrick's hair.  
  
"At least you can like, get to pictures of Elisa, now."  
  
Patrick nodded against his stomach awkwardly. "Yeah. Yeah, maybe." He held on a little tighter and there was a hot, sinking feeling in Joe's stomach. The feel of arms around him, warmth from Patrick's face through his shirt, his wrists at the small of his back, where his shirt had bunched...  
He extracted himself; carefully and deliberately patting Patrick on the shoulder and reaching for the silicone oven mit as an excuse to turn away. "I should check on these assholes before they burn."  
  
Later, Patrick sat on the daybed and sang old blues songs with one of his guitars while Joe picked through his possessions and tried to remind himself that he could come back, he didn't need to take everything, even though the thought knotted under his sternum.  
  
"When we get back, where are you gonna live? At the townhouse?" Patrick asked, still strumming out chords.  
  
Joe shrugged, "I was thinking probably my mom and dad's place. It's closer to Pete's folks' place… and, like… them, sort of."  
  
"Hm… that makes sense. Although, I'm kind of weirded out about by the thought of living in our house alone, y'know? Like, if it was just a me and Elisa thing, maybe I could, but… when there are no neighbours or anything…"  
  
Joe turned to look at him, still bowed over the guitar and focused on the strings, and said, "I sort of thought you'd live with me… I mean, we said we'd stick together, basically..." He didn't want to be alone, either. There was comfort in being at his parents' house, but it was still full of ghosts.  
  
For the first time, Patrick stopped playing and looked up at him, his cheeks lightly pink. "I mean, dude, _yes_ , that would be amazing, but I don't wanna impose or anything - it's a tough time, y'know? If you'd rather be alone -?"  
  
"I literally can't think of anything I want less, right now, my dude." He grinned at him, encouragingly, although there was still a heavy weight in his belly and he didn't have a whole lot to smile about. Patrick was the one person he could rely on for mutual comfort, he wasn't going to turn him away and risk losing him, too.  
  
After a while, listening to Patrick's voice as he wandered around the apartment, picking up things to shove in his suitcase, he almost forgot why he was doing it. It was a little like packing for tour when they were living in Roscoe Village - no real idea where to begin, trying to predict every eventuality, paranoid about leaving behind the one thing he should have brought along - only this time it was about the things with sentimental value, the things that would help him remember.  
  
He'd always been attached to Things. Things that made no sense, a lot of the time - he'd put a ticket stub somewhere safe to never be looked at again, but keep the receipt from the gas station on the way home. Not for any financial records, just because. Before they moved to New York, he'd kept shoeboxes in cupboards, just of stuff he knew he didn't need but couldn't bring himself to let go of - Marie had coached that out of him, for the most part. He still had four of every kind of cable he could ever need, but at least they only took up one storage container in the guestroom, now, instead of most of the garage at the townhouse.  
  
Marie liked simple things. She kept their home as minimalist as Joe could tolerate, with the strangest curios to counterpoint all the modernist lines she liked. He'd tried really hard to 'get' the art she was into, but more often than not he felt like he appreciated it for all the wrong reasons; she never made him feel foolish, though, she just embraced his weirdness with bright eyes and told him that he had a cool way of looking at things that made her reevaluate them, too. He'd appreciated that so much - how kind and indulgent she was; there were only two other people who'd really kept him on the straight and narrow like that, who'd humoured his nature - one was his mom, the other was singing blues songs in the guest room.  
  
Marie had always had so much faith in him. She'd gradually made him realise that he was worth more than anyone gave him credit for. He'd spent so long watching Patrick create things that awed him, never believing he could write anything good enough to complement it - it hadn't occurred to him to push to be allowed to try. There wasn't room for him in the dynamic, anyway, he'd thought. But she'd made him want to show her what he could do, and that was how he realised that there was no avenue for it in the band the way things were. The things he'd written and seemed to have made the cut were quietly dismissed and he'd felt tricked like a little kid, like when his dad would sit him on his lap and tell him he was the one driving. He'd been a coward, though; he could bicker with all of them but he was never good at real conflict or fighting his own corner, far more inclined to hope that someone would ask, knowing they wouldn't.  
  
And then, when his self-esteem had troughed low enough, he made it worse by spilling his insecurity and frustration to a hack. He'd half-known what would happen, even as he opened his mouth, but he was so tired and felt so impotent, he almost didn't care. The saddest thing was that none of them even believed he'd said it - not like that, not meaning it the way it sounded. They still hadn't bothered to ask, though, because Joe was fine, Joe was always fine.  
  
So, he'd wrapped up all that hurt and self-pity and carried it with him, even after he'd proven himself by writing music with Scott Fucking Ian. And he'd been so mad at Patrick in particular, felt so bitter, that he'd given him the silent treatment like a bratty kid, and waited for him to notice.  
  
It had taken far too long. But when Patrick had - when he'd finally realised how much of a mess they were in - he'd been openly devastated. It had been easy to feel coolly vindicated, when he'd been on the opposite coast, listening to him pleading and bargaining for a second chance over the phone, because he needed Joe, he did, and he needed the whole band, couldn't do this without him. But he'd been detached from it then, couldn't see the tight, jittering stress Patrick was carrying. Joe had asked him, once, where he had been when Joe needed him. He'd been quiet for a few long moments, and then softly said, "You had Marie. You never needed me."  
  
And she'd truly liked Patrick. Even through the drama between them, she'd taken Joe's side but tried to keep things in perspective. She didn't think Patrick was the malevolent little traitor that Joe convinced himself he was. But he'd only done that to keep him at a distance - he'd figured it out in all those nights spent getting things off their chests and getting back inside each other's heads - Patrick had hurt him like no one else ever could, twice, and he'd been trying to find reasons to invert his feelings. To repaint him in his head as consciously cruel and selfish, when he was neither of those things, just because that made it easier to not be around him.  
  
A small, niggling devil on his shoulder asked the question in his ear: _but if you could only have one of them, who would it be? Who would you have chosen?  
  
_ His heart immediately answered, _Marie_ \- obviously Marie - she as his wife, his life partner, his future - but his gut churned and another little voice at the back of his mind scoffed at his certainty.  
  
He worshipped her, placed her on a pedestal she entirely deserved, he thought, but he'd chosen Patrick before - put his needs in place of what she wanted or their future - so maybe he shouldn't kid himself that his devotion to her was as complete as he wanted to believe.  
  
\---  
  
In the guestroom, Patrick felt himself growing restless. He set down the guitar, back on its stand, and picked up the scrapbook he'd looked through earlier, to put it back on the shelf and pull down another - an earlier volume from before they released _Evening_ , even. As he did so, a piece of paper tumbled to the floor. It was folded, the edges thinning where they were creased, and he opened it up carefully to find further sheets inside it - three in all. They were covered in stick figures, little comic panels in black ink, each with tiny bobble heads of familiar figures from their youth. Joe himself, with the mop of wild curls he'd sported that summer, Andy with his silky bobbed hair, Pete with his poker-straight sideburns that made him look like Jimmy Pop and Patrick himself with a tiny baseball cap. He laughed, delighted to see them all captured, and sank back down onto the daybed to read through the careful illustrations.  
  
It started simply enough: they were going on tour, and Joe was excited. Then Patrick appeared and Joe's little bobblehead had small black circles on his cheeks and his eyes were a weird shape, he had to squint to figure out what it was. They were hearts - crooked, ill-practised hearts.  
  
He could feel himself blushing, his cheeks warming as he now realised what the little Joe in the picture was doing. Maybe he shouldn't read this. Maybe this wasn't intended for the scrapbook. But he turned over the page to check and gave a small gasp of embarrassment, his lip instinctively pinched between his teeth. In the middle of the page, surrounded by smaller scenes depicting a number of recognisable incidents, was a larger sketch. Most of it was black - the thick stripes of a Sharpie still visible after all these years - but in the darkness of the scene, two inexpertly drawn teenagers were very obviously having sex.  
  
He wasn't quite sure why it embarrassed him. After all, he could probably still pinpoint some of those exact locations, because he'd been there, he'd done all of this in real life and he'd stopped being embarrassed after the second time Joe saw him naked and giggled, 'Awesome…' to himself. But this was different, somehow. This was what had happened through Joe's eyes and the things he remembered about an intense, formative summer that Patrick was pretty sure had changed both of them on some level.  
  
For a few moments, he paused, folding the pages back in half, knowing he should put them back, pretend he'd never seen them. But there was a deep, nagging feeling in his belly. What if that last page gave some kind of hint about why they'd never talked about it, after? But then, what if he didn't want to see the truth? What if he was better off not knowing?  
  
His hands didn't care, they were already re-opening the pages, slipping the first two aside, so he could look at the final scenes. And he was right. He probably was better off not knowing, because on that last page it all fell apart.  
  
In a long panel across the top, with careful detail that made it perfectly apparent where it was, the little Patrick was making out next to a van with a Lego-haired girl, a little taller than him and drawn absurdly skinny, even for a stick figure.  
  
Below it, three further panels brutally depicted Joe's reaction. Wide-eyed shock, a single tear coursing down his doodled cheek; running down the street, away from the scene, and then huddled under a street lamp, the background black but for a ray of light casting down on the little figure with his head buried in his arms.  
  
In a tiny thought bubble, an even smaller Patrick stamped on the heart of a tiny, rag-doll Joe with crosses for eyes and a jagged hole through the middle of his shirt, all while he smiled innocently under his cap.  
  
Sitting in Joe's guestroom, so many years after the fact, caught up in the intergalactic disaster they were living, Patrick's blood ran cold.  
  
"Oh." Suddenly, he couldn't breathe. "Oh, no. No… Dude, I didn't know…" he whispered to himself, his heart in his mouth, a hand clasped over it. " _Fuck._ "  
  
He'd never realised - if he had, then… He bit his lip so hard it hurt, pushing his fingers helplessly into his hair, knocking his cap back onto the mattress behind him. He went back to the page before, the bottom corner panels, where a girl was talking to Joe at what looked like a show, and he responded, 'Thanks but I have a b…unch of stuff to do,' just as Patrick appeared next to him in the last little pane.  
  
It seemed ridiculous to want to cry over this now - when things had gone so far, since. But he did want to, he wanted to cry for the seventeen year old boy whose heart he'd accidentally broken because Pete had told him things that happened on tour weren't supposed to carry on when you got home. The little parallel universe of that tour had bled into the real world, but he hadn't realised and he'd clearly devastated the person who'd cared so deeply for him that - if his comic was to be believed - he had cried himself to sleep in pane after pane of weeks afterwards. He'd even brought his girlfriend - the girlfriend Joe had seen him kissing that night when she'd pounced on him while he grabbed a new lead from the van - to the hospital when Joe was sick. What a huge fucking jerk he must have seemed…  
  
He just didn't know any of it mattered to Joe. He'd been sad when it ended, too - he'd never had the nerve to expect it to carry on once they got home, but if Joe had said something… if he'd realised…  
  
He scrubbed at one eye with the palm of his hand. He had no right to be upset. He could at least have waited a few weeks before agreeing to date her, but he was bummed out about the tour and their little thing reaching its inevitable conclusion. He was a shy eighteen year old and he didn't think Joe wanted him, but she did. He knew he wouldn't get a chance again if he turned her down.  
  
The guilt and shock made him feel sick. All these years and he'd been too stupid to figure this out for himself… What if that explained everything? What if everything would've been different if he'd just _said something_? He got to his feet, not really sure what he was doing. His impulse was to go to Joe and tell him outright - _Dude, I didn't know - I didn't realise you wanted us to be dating and I would have been_ so _into that!_ \- but he was dealing with stuff far more traumatic and far more recent than their summer romance from when they were teenagers. What if all of this was just teenage stuff - they were in their late twenties now, they were both married, what if he looked back on that time and cringed? What if he was over it within a couple of months and never really thought of it again?  
  
He sank back down, one hand over his mouth, fingertips pressed between his lips, anxiously, the sheets of paper open in his hands. He could remember so many little details - the nervous way they'd shifted into a comfortable position before they very deliberately made out, that first time; how terrified he'd been and how quickly that had disappeared, because it was _Joe_ and he could feel him shaking. He didn't know if it was adrenaline or if he was just as scared as Patrick was, but they'd done it again and again until the only shaking that happened was a sign of success. Not that they hadn't had their fair share of mistakes, too - they were slightly naive kids, it was a steep learning curve - but they'd gotten through them together. There was a lot of trust required to fuck one of your closest friends and bandmates in a space with doors that opened from the outside. A lot of indignity, too, and he still felt proud of the way they'd dealt with the less fun parts - especially for two kids who were barely even eighteen at the time. He thought they'd dealt with a lot of it like adults - but it clearly wasn't the part that mattered.  
  
"Where did you get that?"  
  
Patrick looked up, blinking in alarm as Joe stood in the doorway, the colour drained from his face.  
  
"It's just - I was looking through the scrapbooks, and..."  
  
They stared at each other, wide eyed, and Patrick couldn't even think clearly enough to fold up the depiction of their sleeping bag exploits in his hands and save them both any more embarrassment.  
  
"You weren't - that was kind of… _Fuck_." Joe half-leaned against the doorjamb, covering his face with both hands. He looked ready to implode into himself with embarrassment. With a heavy sigh, he rolled his shoulder against the wood and started to turn to walk away.  
  
"Joe, wait, I -"  
  
Heavily, almost like a reluctant teenager turning back to listen to a lecture from a parent, he leaned against the door frame again, and sighed tiredly. "Didn't you think you should maybe have like, left that the fuck alone?"  
  
"I didn't - I mean, I was just looking at the scrapbooks from before, I didn't know this was in there…"  
  
"We were kids, okay? It doesn't matter -"  
  
"How can you think it doesn't matter? I mean, why - you never even _said anything_..."  
  
"Of course I didn't! We got home and the first thing you did was make out with someone else!"  
  
Patrick got to his feet again, still clutching the paper but wanting to reach out and grab Joe's wrists, desperately. "But I didn't know, dude, I thought -"  
  
"Were the three weeks, like, cuddling and making out in the van not a fucking clue?"  
  
"No!" Patrick told him, hearing how absurd it sounded, even as he said it. "Look - you don't understand - I - everything that happened meant something to me, okay? Everything. But everyone - I mean, mostly Pete, but the other guys too - they said that what happened on tour stayed on tour and I thought that's how you felt about what we were doing. You never showed _any_ interest in me before that tour, we were just friends, and you never even talked about being into other dudes -"  
  
"Of course I didn't talk about it, I was a sixteen year old in the hardcore scene, when we met! Did you talk about it?"  
  
"No, but if I'd thought for a second that you wanted…" He stopped himself, his head spinning a little, his heart thumping in his throat. "Joe… I know I'm gonna sound like an asshole who's just trying to make things better when it's too late for it to matter, now, but if I'd thought there was a choice, it's not her I would have chosen."  
  
There was a freezing silence before Joe reacted. His voice was deliberately even. "But you did."  
  
"I didn't _choose_ her because I didn't think you were an option! We got home, y'know, and all through the other bands, you were basically ignoring me - you went off and hung out with pretty much anyone but me - and I thought that basically everything Pete had warned me about was happening. That this was you distancing yourself from me - from what we'd been doing - and I was supposed to take the hint. It really - and I'm not saying this to make you feel bad, but - it really hurt, y'know? I liked you a lot - a hell of a lot - and I was prepared for it to finish when we got home, because that's what I expected, but that doesn't mean I wanted it to."  
  
Joe huffed, flinging his hands out in exasperation. "I was just talking to our friends that I didn't see for three weeks - nothing was stopping you hanging out with us! I didn't exactly think if I turned my back for a second you'd just like, go and make out with some girl who suddenly thought you were fuckable because you were in a real band, even though you used to tell me how she fucking blanked you all through school!"  
  
Patrick closed his eyes for a moment, cringing at the thought of what Joe had witnessed, how it must have looked - the effect had been illustrated for him in detail. "What you saw was her making a move on me, not the other way around. I would never have initiated that, especially not then."  
  
"You looked pretty into it. And you still wound up dating her for four years. I still had to put up with you banging her in the apartment and listen to you talking to her in that fucking baby voice…"  
  
"Dude, she was like… she was my rebound. From you. And I guess it just kind of got out of control, y'know? I _wanted_ us to be together - I was miserable when we got home! I mean, to me, it was like it was all just for fun to you - like it didn't matter any more than that fucking air hockey game at the Fireside Bowl - and I was starting to figure out it wasn't like that for me. So, yeah, I kind of threw myself into that whole relationship with her because it made me feel a little better about you."  
  
Still standing in the doorway, with his arms wrapped around himself, Joe rolled his eyes to the ceiling and sighed. "I never said that's all I wanted it to be. You're the one who chose to listen fucking Pete."  
  
"I did. And believe me, now I know how fucking wrong he was, I regret ever listening to a word he said, Joe! Because even if I was an idiot about it at the time, I figured out later that I really kind of loved you, so to find out all this time later that you… that things could've been _different_ \- it's kind of hard, y'know? To think about. To sit here in yours and Marie's apartment while the whole world is going wrong and to realise that I messed things up _so bad_ … and that the person I wanted, then, I could've had and now you're all I've got, but everything is so different..."  
  
Joe didn't say anything for a few moments, he stood where he was, gazing at the ceiling, almost spaced out. Eventually, he took a long breath and picked his way around the storage boxes half-emptied on the floor and sat down on a plastic box in front of him, rolling his ring around his finger again.  
  
"Marie wanted me to talk to someone about it."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"About, like… not getting over it and stuff."  
  
"Aren't you…?" A lump pushed at Patrick's throat - torn between terrible, consuming guilt, and the hope that maybe there was a chance that even after everything, maybe things would be okay. Maybe what had been taken from them would leave them with something better.  
  
"I mean, I think I am, but like… she doesn't." Joe took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes, leaving them hanging from his fingers as he carried on, wearily. "It just got pretty hard, dude - to trust people and stuff. After the whole thing with Pete a couple of years before, I kind of like put up walls and stuff and then I let you in and you just… I mean, it seemed like you kind of dumped me for her like I was nothing, basically… 'Cause like, you can explain it your way all you want and stuff, but that wasn't how I saw it, back then. I thought… it sounds really fucking lame, now, but… I kind of thought we had a Thing, you know? That we were, like…"  
  
"An item."  
  
Joe nodded slowly, hunched over elbows propped on his knees, eyes staring, unfocused, at the carpet. "I thought of you as, like, maybe my boyfriend, or something, and I wouldn't have done any of that stuff if I didn't think something was gonna come of it, but I came back out of the hall to find you, and you were making out with someone else. I mean, like, maybe I was romanticising what happened because I was an idiot, but I almost…. Like, it mattered enough that I really thought about quitting the band because of it."  
  
"Oh, Joe…" Patrick sank his head into his hands, running his fingers around the back of his scalp, to interlock them, his shoulders hunched. There was a tight, muffled sound in his throat, and he wasn't sure if it was a sob, but he shifted a little closer to lean his forehead into Joe's shoulder. "I'm so, _so_ sorry… I swear, if I knew you wanted us to be a real thing, I would have been _so_ into it, I just… I had no idea you felt that way. I would have given anything to keep doing what we were doing… Honestly, in hindsight, I wish I'd never even met her… She basically ruined my life."  
  
"If she hadn't, maybe you'd never have married Elisa…"  
  
"If none of this had happened and we would've figured ourselves out, then I wouldn't even have known that, though… Maybe we would've been happy."  
  
He wanted to tell him the whole truth - that part of the reason he'd been so destroyed by Anna cheating on him and their relationship ending, was that he realised he'd wasted all that time and wished that he'd fought for Joe all those years before, but Joe was happy with Marie and there was nothing he could do about it. But he couldn't tell him that, not now - they'd come too far.  
  
Instead, it was Joe telling the difficult truths and it hurt just as much. "Yeah, well… fact is, I really loved you, dude. Like, I think you actually broke my heart. I don't know if that was even like, something I believed happened in real life, back then, until it did."  
  
Patrick nodded against him, his fingers unwinding themselves to slide under Joe's arm and curl around his bicep, holding on tight. "I didn't meant to - I _swear_ , if I knew…" He lifted his face a little and pressed his lips to Joe's shoulder - not really a kiss, so much as an attempt to express long-stifled empathy.  
  
"Yeah." He paused. "We're kind of a pair of dumb fucks, right?"  
  
Patrick gave a small, miserable splutter of a laugh. "Yeah."  
  
"C'mere."  
  
Joe shifted onto the mattress beside him and wrapped both arms around him in a bear hug, holding on so tight it almost squeezed the air out of him. Patrick rested his cheek on Joe's shoulder, swallowing and trying to convey how devastated he was through the death grip his fingers had latched onto Joe's shirt. The idea that he'd caused Joe so much pain - had been instrumental in further breaking down his confidence - was burning a hole through his chest. He didn't deserve Joe - he was lucky that Joe had even agreed to be friends with him, after; any hope that there might be some way that this could lead to them rekindling that summer's intimacy was null. He'd been better off with Marie - someone who'd obviously understood him much better than Patrick had, no matter what he'd believed all this time.  
  
"I'd understand if you never forgave me… If, y'know, it would be better if I went and stayed with Pete when we got back, I mean -"  
  
Joe snorted and kissed his temple with the corner of his mouth. "We're fine, Ric. I mean, I don't know if, like, I can just go, 'Oh hey, that's cool - turns out he didn't even know he broke my heart', right away, basically, but I'm not pissed about it. I'm just kind of tired. Of like, life and stuff, pretty much. My whole life just fell apart and I lost the person I thought I was gonna spend the rest of my life with, and I don't even know what happened, and it's kind of fucked up. I mean, it'd be pretty easy to just, like, lose it, right now, but I kind of know I can't, because I have Louis, and I have you… and I have those fucking headcases back in Chicago, because what the fuck would they do without someone to bitch at them for being jerks?"  
  
Patrick hummed a laugh and rubbed at his back. "I'd be really grateful if you wouldn't leave me with them, y'know? You kind of keep me sane."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Yeah… I mean, since the band got back together and everything, I kind of realised how much I missed having you around, y'know?" Patrick pulled away and sat up, keeping one arm around Joe's back, smoothing fondly at his side. "I keep thinking, sort of, _'How did I deal with two years like that?_ ' - I didn't even come here until now… I kind of missed you retroactively and it was sort of weird and it kind of hurt, I guess."  
  
He could feel Joe gazing down at the side of his face. "I wanna say I missed you, too, but like… mostly, I was just mad."  
  
Patrick glanced up at him, unsure whether he meant it and was relieved to find him smirking.  
  
\---  
  
By the time night fell, they'd settled together in the living room, in the dark, drinking the last of the beers in the fridge and looking at the smattering of lights in the distant city, just visible between the buildings across the street. New York was silent. Joe had never experienced silence like it - it wasn't the silence of the desert, it was an absence of noise that should have been there. When the aircon switched itself on, a usually quiet hum against the backdrop of the traffic and voices in the street, it startled him with how loud it felt. They were completely alone, it seemed. A handful of national guard on the major intersections, and the rats in the alleys, but nobody else. Just them.  
  
There was a summer storm starting to roll in over the ocean. The distant rumbles sent a chill up his spine. Another reminder of how small they were, rattling around in this empty apartment building, in this void of a city. An abrupt flash lit up the room for a second, and Patrick muttered, _"Holy shit_ ," to himself, casting Joe a glance as if wondering whether he'd seen it, too. For a tiny, irrational second, he'd wondered if they were back. If they'd come to collect the rest of them, or bring back what they'd taken from them on Monday morning. But it was nothing - just nature carrying on around them, undisturbed by their absence.  
  
They hadn't talked much for the last hour or two. It kind of felt like they were both adjusting to the new state of things. Patrick had switched on the phone with his SIM in it and been momentarily excited about a new email alert, until he realised it was an automated Google update for mentions of narwhals, and it was the first thing that had made Joe really laugh in days. The nerdy familiarity of an almost-thirty-year-old who received alerts about things he'd thought were cool when he was in middle school was endearing.  
  
On the couch, Patrick shuffled a little nearer and rested his head on Joe's shoulder. He didn't mind. If anything, it was nice to have the human contact, so he lifted his arm and dropped it around him. Louis was laying with his head in Joe's lap, ears twitching at each clap of thunder. He was starting to feel a little drowsy, the emotional upheaval and three nights of inconsistent and uncomfortable sleep catching up on him. He was thinking that Patrick might be on the verge of drifting off, too, and that they should think about setting up the guest bed, when he spoke.  
  
"What do you think'll happen, now?"  
  
"I guess we need to leave in the morning… I'll put this little duder in his crate on the back seat, he'll sleep most of the way."  
  
"Okay. Only, I meant in the greater scheme of things, you know? Maybe we need to start catching up on the news or something… I mean, the government has to provide for people, you know? They need to get out there with provisions or something, if the stores are all closed."  
  
Joe shrugged. "Dunno, dude." Truth be told, he didn't entirely care. His life wasn't going to be the same again, he couldn't really bring himself to think in too much detail about the mundanities of surviving an apocalypse he didn't care so much about making it through. "Not sure it even matters, honestly. How long can we keep this shit going before it becomes Lord of the Flies? Especially with Pete around."  
  
"Well, what else are we gonna do?" Patrick asked, and there was a hollow, uncertain laughter in his voice.  
  
He shrugged again and took a sip of his beer. "Just keep going through the motions, I guess. We all have a survival instinct, supposedly. It's the thing that makes people throw their shoulders out when they jump off buildings, right? Even when you give up the game, your body doesn't want to. So, you just keep fucking going, basically."  
  
"But you don't - I mean -"  
  
"No. This little dude needs me…" He scratched at Louis's belly absently.  
  
"So do I," Patrick said softly, his hands still.  
  
Joe smiled a little. "Thanks."  
  
"I'm serious."  
  
"I know."  
  
"Joe -"  
  
"Dude, it's the apocalypse - can't you just like, let a guy miserable for a little while?"  
  
Patrick snorted a grim chuckle. "Sure. Fine. I'm gonna call Pete, tell him we're coming home…"  
  
Joe lifted his arm to let him get the phone out and was a little surprised when he stood up and left the room, even moreso when he heard the geek room door closing behind him. Immediately, his mind filled with paranoid theories about what he was going to tell him. He'd have preferred that Pete didn't hear anything about it - Pete had had the privilege of flinging open the van door one night and catching an eyeful of their warm up act, that was more than enough - he didn't really want him to be privy to how badly they'd both screwed up, or perhaps how successfully he'd cockblocked them, long term. It was one of his favourite hobbies, back then - finding a way to ensure that he was the only one getting any - and the whole 'what happens on tour stays on tour' line had been pretty golden, even if it took three weeks to have any tangible effect. It definitely hadn't stopped them until they got back home.  
  
He was still grateful for that, even if it had caused him a decade of misery, because he'd planned the whole thing out for weeks beforehand. They already hung out a lot and by the time the tour came around he knew Patrick well enough to know he wouldn't punch him in the mouth for flirting with him. He'd psyched himself up for it, and then he'd been caught off guard when Patrick was the one who initiated things. Quiet, awkward Patrick; one night, too self-conscious to take off his shirt in front of another dude and the next, offering to make out with him for something to do when the batteries on his old Gameboy gave out.  
  
Maybe because their time was so limited, their opportunities so protracted and their teenage hormones so out of control, things had got out of hand real quick. It had all the intensity of any young romance, only there were no responsible adults around to make them wary (Pete certainly didn't fucking count), and for three weeks they spent all their time - every moment - in each other's company. It had all happened so fast and, foolishly - or so he'd assumed for so long - he'd really thought Patrick might feel the same. Because surely, if you spent weeks curled up against someone when you slept, when you'd moved from hesitantly making out to pass the time, to having awkward but enthusiastic sex at every available opportunity and slipped your hand into theirs when no one was looking, when that person was so far inside your head that you started to sound alike, surely that meant something?  
  
But on the night they returned home to Chicago, Patrick had disappeared during Spitalfield's set, and when he'd found him, he'd had been standing in the shadows between their van and Nick's car, with Anna, the girl who wouldn't look at him twice before they left.  
  
Just days before his eighteenth birthday, his heart had been broken. He'd almost left them there and called his dad to bring him home, quit the band on the spot, but a dull sense of duty and Andy's bewildered intervention made him stay. Instead, he curled himself up on the curb down the street while he decided what to do, partly hoping Patrick would come find him and apologise - explain that he wasn't anything like as into it as he'd looked - partly never wanting to see his face ever again.  
  
It had devastated him, and they'd never talked about it in the eleven years since. Not until now. It was really the only thing they'd never addressed, even through all those late night conversations, when they worked out their problems sitting close on the old brown couch in the studio, or in Joe's car parked outside Patrick's house for hours, after they wrapped up and he dropped him home.  
  
He was struggling to come to terms with the realisation that nothing had been as they thought all these years. He'd been harbouring so much hurt and resentment for so long, he didn't know what to do with it, now that he knew how badly things had been messed up. He was still fairly confident it was mostly Patrick's fault, but not for the reasons he'd believed for so long. Patrick _hadn't_ discarded him at the first opportunity, he'd thought he was the one being discarded and he'd been just as upset about it as Joe had. Or, almost - he found it hard to believe that Patrick was as hurt by what happened as he was, because he wasn't even sure of his feelings, at the time. Joe had known. Even afterward, when he met Marie and she was beautiful and amazing and _got him_ , and he'd have done anything for her, he'd never felt that rush again. He'd put it down to teenage infatuation. What he had with her was _real love_ , grown up love that wasn't eternal butterflies or angst, it was just peaceful. Content. It had been what he needed. It was still what he needed.  
  
Certain things - certain memories - still hurt in a way he couldn't express and hadn't wanted to confront, and it had been four years of feeling consumingly inadequate before he met the only person he'd ever believed loved him. And now she was gone and he didn't have the energy left for this. It had worn him down years ago and he'd lived with it, but it had coloured his perception of people and his assumptions about his importance to them for so long, he didn't know how to confront a new reality. Not when all the other things that anchored his world were falling apart. He at least wanted to get things square in his own mind before they were shared with Pete - but what was he supposed to say to stop it?  
  
He finished his beer and got up to put it in the trash in the kitchen, then made his way back to the bedroom. He'd plugged in Marie's phone, earlier, and he checked it absently - the only notifications before had been his own attempts to reach her - there was nothing, except a news alert about the EU declaring a state of emergency. _Ya think?_ He kicked off his shoes and jeans and laid himself down, intending to simply think for a moment, but his eyes closed and the next thing he knew, Louis was asleep half on his chest and Patrick was whispering at him from the doorway.  
  
"Joe? Joe, hey - I locked up, I don't know why, it seems a little pointless… but do you have any bedding for the guest room or anything?"  
  
He squinted at him in the dark, sitting up. "What time is it?"  
  
"A little after twelve."  
  
It had only been after ten when he went into the bedroom. "Crap, sorry, I'll make your bed up -"  
  
"Don't worry, I can do it."  
  
"No, dude, there's a whole thing with like, the mechanism it doesn't just - " Heavily, he dropped his head back to the pillow and yawned, wriggling until the comforter was freed from underneath him and he could get under it.. "D'you just wanna fucking get in? I'm too tired for this shit, you're too tired for this shit…"  
  
Patrick gave an uncertain mumble. "I don't know… this isn't like being in the hotel, that's your 'marital bed', I wouldn't want to -"  
  
"You're so fucking vanilla, man. You wouldn't be the first person neither of us is married to, who has slept in here, just suck it up."  
  
"I - what?"  
  
Mostly, he meant the girlfriends who came to keep her company when he was on tour for weeks at a time, but they each had 'special interests' and they'd always explored each other's. Some of them were tried once, never to be revisited, but others were weekend rituals; the ones requiring more planning kept for occasional thrills or special occasions.  
  
"It's no big deal - we have a couple of occasional nighttime visitors. Just like, stop being prissy and get in."  
  
Patrick seemed to debate this internally, gazing down at him for a long time, jaw a little tight, before setting down his glasses on Joe's night stand.  
  
"Is it weirding you out, dude?"  
  
"I mean… no, but…" _Well, that was a fucking lie_. It was obvious from the frown and the set of his shoulders. "Elisa would so not be into this, if it was our bed…"  
  
"Yeah, well, maybe that's because you hide shit like your sexuality from her so, instead of figuring out your shit together, she has to hear it from other people, which I bet is kind of awkward." He rolled over and buried his face in Marie's pillow. It smelled of fabric softener.  
  
On the other side of the bed, where he'd sat with his back to Joe, Patrick stilled in kicking off his jeans. "I don't even know where you got that, but I wasn't hiding it from her. You were the only guy I ever got involved with, everyone else was female, or it was just fooling around. I just didn't want to make things weird by letting her know I used to have a thing with a guy I went away with for weeks at a time. Early on, she actually asked me about Pete, because she'd seen some Kerrang! article calling us 'The Odd Couple'. Nothing was gonna happen with you and me, so why worry her, y'know? You have to know how people react to finding out you're into both…"  
  
"Marie knows and she's 100% cool about it. Actually, the dudes were her thing. Which is kind of lucky, because Elisa tried to out me to her, apparently."  
  
He felt the weight shift as Patrick whipped around to look at him. "What?"  
  
"It doesn't matter."  
  
"Actually, I kinda think it does."  
  
Joe huffed a little, for effect. He wanted Patrick to know, on some level. He wanted to push him into revealing what exactly was going on. "On the way back out of Chicago, yesterday, I figured I'd try to find some pics of her for you, 'cause you were bummed out about your phone and not having any, and I just wanted to make you feel better. So, I logged into Marie's Facebook, seeing as they're like, friended, or whatever and, basically, there was a message alert, but it was old, and I just ended up seeing a message from your wife, to mine, saying she'd heard stuff. I mean, like, Marie told her she knew - and it's damn fucking lucky she already did - but then, my wife and I actually talk, so…"  
  
The silence from the other side of the bed felt like static electricity. After a couple of moments of stillness, Joe rolled back to look up at him, half afraid that he didn't believe him. There wasn't a lot of light coming in through the window and the lamp was dimmed, but he could see the thin-lipped rage on Patrick's face even in the half-light.  
  
"Why would she even _do that_?" he exploded finally, flinging his t-shirt across the room, where it hit the wardrobe and slid to the floor. "What the hell is wrong with her?"  
  
"Actually, I guess someone told her what you didn't, and she got sort of antsy."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"I _dunno_ , Ric, she didn't say. She was kind of too busy implying she was the only reason you didn't seduce me and take me away from Marie, yet, and basically that she should be grateful for it. Which, like, no offence but _fuck you, lady."  
  
_ Patrick pulled his feet up and sat hunched over crossed legs, one hand pressed over his mouth.  
  
"I guess that probably explains the whole fight you had before coming to Las Vegas, anyway."  
  
When he didn't respond, Joe propped himself up on his elbows and watched carefully; then rolled onto his knees and crawled over to sit beside him, just in time to catch Patrick wiping at his eye. He stood up, pulling his arm free of Joe's grasp.  
  
"I kind of… I'm gonna take a sec."

  
"Oh, dude - c'mon -"  
  
But the bedroom door was swinging shut behind him.  
  
\---  
  
The air on the balcony was warm and sticky, even though the storm had passed; the air didn't feel any clearer. He'd stupidly taken off his shirt - he'd been slightly on autopilot, wasn't really thinking what he was doing, too distracted by the realisation that he had grossly underestimated his wife, in several ways - and now he was standing barefoot and half-naked on the balcony in the middle of an empty city and he felt absurdly exposed but he couldn't bring himself to do anything about it.  
  
Instead, he rested his elbows on the white moulded concrete and folded them across himself, letting his head droop heavily.  
  
She'd known. She'd obviously seen through him and even Joe had seen that she'd seen something, only he hadn't worked out the detail himself. He felt so stupid - all this misplaced confidence that he was behaving naturally, like nothing was up, and that she'd just accepted it because she knew how important their friendship was to him, and he'd been completely fucking wrong. He could see it, now - the tight smile she'd give him when he cheerfully told her he'd been sitting in the drive with Joe for two hours, talking; or the way she asked _'What time will you be home?'_ and _'Will the others be there?'_ He'd thought he was being honest in telling her where he was and who he was with, but he'd been lying by omission and he'd known that, deep down. He could hear the excuses he'd made to himself for the tension at home, too - she was used to having him around all the time; the prospect of getting on a tour bus again - which she'd loathed - was pissing her off before it even happened. Maybe he had paid too much attention to Joe, on Pete's birthday. Maybe when she said she was tired, she was tired of him. And honestly, he couldn't blame her.  
  
He knew what he'd do in those circumstances and he knew how it would feel, because he'd been there. He'd listened to things being explained away, he'd been gaslit; he'd found out his girlfriend of four years - who he'd considered to be his future and planned to marry and have children with - was cheating on him with one of his own friends. And the guilt, which he'd felt from the moment he realised that he was in too deep with his feelings for Joe, which he'd tried to bury and ignore for so long, had been legitimate. It had been warranted. Because when he'd pledged to forsake all others he'd meant it - but, evidently, he couldn't keep his promise.  
  
But even so, there was a deep knot in his belly, an angry jealousy that the perfect, impenetrable union he'd deferred to all these years had been penetrated by someone - or many someones - and none of them had been him. The thought that Joe had allowed someone into the relationship that Patrick had been so envious and reverent of, so cautious not to interfere with, and it wasn't him, was more upsetting than the revelation that his wife had been abducted believing that he was cheating on her with his oldest friend.  
  
Five days of exhaustion and confusion and fear pressed at his chest, toppled under the weight of the guilt and shame and shock, and a deep, wracking sob escaped him. He'd had enough. He couldn't cope. Arriving in Chicago had been hard - it had been real and he hadn't imagined it feeling the way it did, he thought it would be comforting and it wasn't - but this was the true breaking point. It was like everything he'd wished for had come true, but had been granted by a cruel god serving him the letter of his desires without the true intent.  
  
He'd wanted to fool around with his childhood friend, and they had, but it had gone wrong; he'd wanted it to have meant something more, to be loved back - and Joe had - but he'd never known; he'd wanted them to be friends again, and they'd fixed that but now they were only friends; he'd wished for a way for the obstacles to be removed so that he stood a chance of being together, and now they were going to have to stick together because _everyone else_ was gone - the whole world had ended. None of this was what he wanted, but he felt like he'd asked for it.  
  
Everything bubbled to the surface like a pot boiling over and he couldn't contain it, anymore. He buried his face in his arms on the balcony ledge and simply cried.  
  
He'd fallen into small, smothered sobs behind his fist by the time Joe appeared. A hand, warm and gentle slid on to his shoulder, his thumb rubbing at the bare skin; Patrick shifted uncomfortably to slide out from underneath it, hypersensitive to the contact.  
  
"That was kind of dickish."  
  
Patrick nodded his head and tried to compose himself, feeling the warmth of Joe's skin an inch from his bare arm. "Well, I'm clearly a dick, so..."  
  
"I wasn't actually talking about that. I meant, like, telling you about Elisa like that. I'm sorry."  
  
Joe sighed when Patrick didn't answer.  
  
"Honestly, I don't think skipping out on telling her about stuff that happened a decade ago makes you a horrible person. I mean, like, probably a little chicken, but..."  
  
"It's not because of that…" Patrick told him, sniffing and wiping his nose on the inside of his wrist.  
  
"You're not responsible for her being an asshole because she felt threatened, either."  
  
"No," Patrick corrected, "I'm responsible because I gave her reason to feel threatened."  
  
He could feel Joe tensing next to him, his fingers twitching on the wall, the weight of the inevitable question bearing down on them both. He didn't want to answer it. He'd barely slept for three days, Joe wasn't in the right place to hear the truth, because there was a very real chance he'd think Patrick was trying to take advantage of the fact she was gone - Joe couldn't help but find excuses to blame others for his unhappiness, to find some focus for it. For the last few days it had been Pete, for the last few years it had been Patrick - he'd only just fixed things, he didn't want Joe turn against him again, not for something he couldn't change.  
  
Joe's hands curled into fists. "Are you serious?"  
  
He nodded. He could hardly see, in the dark without his glasses, and it was a relief in a way. It meant the look on Joe's face - the expression as he realised and reacted - was blurred and softened.  
  
For a very long moment, Joe stared at him, and then pressed a hand over his mouth and turned to lean back against the balcony with his other arm wrapped across his chest.  
  
"You weren't supposed to find out," Patrick tried, sniffing and rubbing his nose on the inside of his wrist, hearing an embarrassingly broken inflection in his voice. "But that's the reality of what was wrong in my marriage, seeing as you wanted to know so bad: it was you."  
  
"But I'm married," Joe told him, stupidly, as if Patrick hadn't considered this.  
  
"Yes. Thank you, I am _painfully_ aware of that."  
  
It was a relief to have finally said it, but so frightening to have exposed the one thing that could really drive a wedge between them - especially knowing, now, that there had been a real chance for them all that time ago, and he'd blown it. Joe didn't forgive easily and his frozen silence terrified him.  
  
"How long?" Joe asked, his voice gravelly, like the information had constricted his throat.  
  
Patrick found himself swallowing, in sympathy or discomfort, he wasn't sure. "For years, on and off… Always at the wrong times. It sort of came and went, y'know? I got on with my life and I moved on for a little bit and I did okay, I was happy, I guess, but it always came back to you… Watching you be happy with her was… I mean, I was _happy_ for you, but I just… I got kind of depressed about the way things were. Elisa and I were kind of going through a rough patch because it was the first time we were properly in the studio since we started dating, so I put all of my focus into Folie and I made it worse and treated you really, really badly because it was hard for me. I just needed an outlet, y'know? And then, the stuff you wanted to write music for was on songs I couldn't sing, because Pete was in his biographical phase and I was pretty sure they were about us… And that looked just _hugely_ shitty of me, but what else could I do? I could see how much it upset you, but I think I just kind of thought, 'yeah, you and me both, buddy.'  
  
"Recently, after we got the band back together and we started getting to be really close, again, I just sort of couldn't get a grip on it, anymore. And you have to believe me when I say I feel really, really shitty about that and I would never have intentionally done a thing to come between you and Marie, because I'm not an idiot. I could see there was no point, because you were basically perfect together - and it's not like I even knew, before now, that you ever even felt that way about me, so I had literally no reason to think it'd be worth throwing everything away again… I really respected what you had together, I'd never try to damage that, whatever Elisa thought… But I just… I can't shake how I feel, and I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry that I'm not her, but I am so, _so_ in love with you..."  
  
There was a long silence, and Joe's voice was quiet and distant as he said, "I should've fucking figured this out," leaning away from the wall and pacing, as much as was possible on a small balcony, his fingers knitted at the back of his neck.  
  
"But I'm glad you didn't. I didn't want to ruin everything, Joe, I just - I've been riding out the storm, y'know? I'm not gonna pretend that sometimes I didn't wish things could be different, but never at the expense of what we already have." He paused, watching Joe take a deep breath and exhale it long and hard. "This isn't…? It won't ruin that, right?"  
  
In an instant, Joe stopped pacing and became very still. He looked at Patrick with his arms still wrapped around his head, as if sheltering himself from the conversation, and then dropped them abruptly. "What am I supposed to say, dude? I can't _unknow_ this."  
  
"I'm not asking you to 'unknow' it, I just hope - I mean, I really need you to let me work through this… I promise I won't try to change things, or - or push any kind of agenda, y'know? I know I messed up, and Elisa completely deserved better than this, and that when they took her she - she probably thought that something was going on, even though it's not, and I can't do anything about that, now… but if I had to choose between the life I had with her - where I was happy enough, where we had a future planned out and it was all the little boxes I wanted checked - and a chance to try again, with you… then… I would have given her every dime I have and I would have felt like a heel for the rest of my life, but I would've done it. Except there was never any point, because I knew I couldn't compete with Marie."  
  
"Did you ever try?"  
  
Patrick frowned at him, sniffing, he wasn't sure how Joe wanted him to answer that. "Not… no, I just lived with it, it's like I told you -"  
  
"So why now, Ric? Why are you telling me this now?"  
  
"Because you kind of brought it up?" Patrick snapped, defensively.  
  
"But why not ten years ago? Why not before we fucked everything up and I spent like two years hating you? Why not before we _both got fucking married_?!"  
  
"What do you mean, 'why'? Because for the first four years, I was in a relationship, and by the time I wasn't, you were with Marie and you were like love's young fucking dream and I didn't think you were into me, anyway. Are you seriously telling me that if you hadn't been married there would ever have been a chance?"  
  
Joe seemed almost stunned into silence by the question. Patrick could see him blinking, just about, as he scraped his fingers into his hair. When he answered, it came out raspy and quiet. "I… don't know."  
  
Patrick felt a little unsteady, whether it was from the shock of the conversation or the sheer exhaustion, he didn't know, but he pressed both palms to his eyes and tried to breathe deeply. "So… what does that mean?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"If I'd come to you, two years ago - or five years ago, or ten years ago - and said to you, 'Here's the thing: I'm actually completely in love with you - I really want us to be together,' - what would you have said? Because I'm pretty sure it wasn't 'Okay, sure'."  
  
"Actually…" Joe gave a little sharp exhale and sat down heavily on the small, folding chair in the corner, "early on… maybe until she came back from Italy… maybe I would. 'Cause, like, I thought about it. Sometimes."  
  
"But you adored her -"  
  
"And you say you love Elisa, but here we fucking are, right?"  
  
The weight of the revelation pushed him down to the 90 year old terracotta tiles, slipping down the wall until he could pull his knees up in front of himself and gaze at the blurry shape of Joe resting his elbows on his knees in front of him.  
  
"I just don't get it. You and Marie seemed so perfect -"  
  
"We are. We're… close to perfect, dude, but. I don't know that I have the right to pretend I was perfect towards her when I chose you over the baby we were gonna have."  
  
"I'm sorry. If I knew, I would never have expected you to -"  
  
"I know, Ric. You're not Pete."  
  
Patrick gave a grim, hollow laugh and leaned his head back against the wall, his eyes closed.  
  
"If I'd… I mean, if I'd kind of like, asked you the same thing…?"  
  
"At any given moment."  
  
Joe nodded slowly and Patrick watched him through slitted eyelids. "I've never not had feelings for you, dude. Even when I hated you, that was a feeling, right? Pete'd say that love and hate are basically the same things, anyway."  
  
"You always swore you never hated me…"  
  
"Well, maybe I kind of did but I also didn't want to make you feel crappy once we made up again…"  
  
"And what about now?"  
  
He shrugged heavily. "I said 'never', didn't I? But I can't just… I really love her. She's been there for me literally every second I needed her."  
  
Carefully, Patrick nodded; he was an old hand at sensing rejection coming his way.  
  
"I married her because we were already together _six years_ by then, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. The only actual relationship you and me had was like, three messed up weeks in a van - how could we know it'd work out?"  
  
"We had three weeks in that van, and twelve more years of literally or figuratively living together and being friends..."  
  
"We do, but it doesn't matter what I feel about that, because I have a wife, and -"  
  
"But isn't the whole problem that you _don't_? That she's gone? They took her, and they took Elisa, and everybody you've ever known."  
  
"Yeah, and I don't know if I'll ever see her again, but I can't just be okay about that because now I've figured out that we messed up. What if tonight I said, 'Okay, sure' and whatever, and tomorrow they bring everybody back? I can't just do that, I won't cheat on her. I still feel like someone stuck their hand in my stomach and tore something out."  
  
Even though he'd never expected to tell Joe how he felt, never mind any suggestion that if he'd asked at the right time, he may have gotten his wish, it still felt like red hot pokers in his belly to be told 'no' now. He swallowed as best he could, and nodded, pressing his palms to the wall to push himself to his feet. "Okay."  
  
"Dude -" Joe caught him by the waist, bare arm against the skin on his stomach. He'd forgotten they were both mostly naked and it winded him; he tried to slide free, but Joe curled his arm tighter, until Patrick almost stumbled back onto his knee, and wrapped the other arm around him to stop him escaping. "Don't just walk out…"  
  
"What more is there to say, Joe? I told you how I feel. You told me how you feel, and then you told me that nothing's gonna come of it. That's fine, okay? But I need -"  
  
Joe sighed heavily and rested his forehead on Patrick's shoulder blade. "You need me to tell you everyone gets a happy ending, basically, and I can't do that. I'm not gonna pretend that, like, everything is magically fixed and like, 'Hey, they've taken my wife, but it's all good 'cause I'll just have Patrick, instead', because it isn't. But dude, I do love you. I loved you even when I really, really didn't fucking want to, but right now, I can't do anything about that. And yeah, that might kind of like piss you off, and I'm not so cool with it, either, but it's the way things are. You wouldn't expect me to just be okay with it if she'd just died in a car wreck, on Monday. And this is kind of worse, because I don't even know if she's alive, I don't know if she's coming back and I might never know what happened to her."  
  
Patrick nodded miserably, just hoping that it would end the conversation so he could ask for a sleeping bag and then go to the guest room to sleep and forget about it.  
  
Gently, Joe rubbed at his his side with his thumb, where it was locked around him, and kissed the back of his shoulder, making him flinch.  
  
"Okay," Joe murmured, loosening his grip and lightly pushing him to his feet, but turning Patrick bodily, to look at him. "I think right now be both just really need sleep. Which brings us back to the original point, are you okay sleeping in our bed, or are you gonna need me to like, set up the guest room?"  
  
"I mean, do you have a sleeping bag, or…?"  
  
"In storage, but I don't know where. Your choices are: sleep in the same bed, like we did on Monday, and we did a bunch of times, over the last like, twelve years; or let me spend a half hour making up the guestroom, which, I'm not gonna lie, I really don't wanna do, but I will, if that's what you want."  
  
"Are you comfortable with sharing with me, right now?"  
  
Joe turned up his nose a little. "Why, do you plan on 'seducing' me, like Elisa was afraid of? 'Cause I would actually be zero fun, right now, and probably just fall asleep on you."  
  
"No - you just told me where I stand. But…"  
  
"Ric, listen: in like, eleven years of us being this fucking lame about each other, nothing happened, right? So, can't we just carry on, like this is the one thing in the world that is still normal? Because that's pretty much what I need from you, right now, to be normal. To be the one thing in my life that isn't messed up."  
  
Patrick sighed and shrugged wearily. He really did just want to sleep. "Fine. Okay."  
  
"Okay. Progress. C'mon."  
  
So, they settled in the bed, back to back with Louis between their feet, and it was testament to how tired he was that even with all the revelations and rejection whirring in his head, Patrick fell asleep deeply and quickly. He was completely unaware when Joe drowsily turned over and shuffled closer until there were just a few inches between them, draping his arm across Patrick's ribs, like he used to in motel twins ten years before.

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

_ I wouldn't leave here without you. _

  
  
  


It was late morning when Pete's phone began vibrating in his hand. Across his parents' kitchen counter, he was watching Andy stare at a slices of hardboiled egg on his plate, his thumb half in his mouth. He'd been sitting there for almost ten minutes, already. It felt like a meal time with Bronx.  
  
"I'm telling you, dude, Mama Chicken lived a good life - my mom only gets shit like this from like, organic, free-range, fed-on-caviar farms, or whatever. Trust me." He put the handset to his ear. "Hey, Cookiejar."  
  
"Hey." Patrick's voice was heavy, with a forced inflection of lightness that Pete didn't buy for a minute.  
  
"What's up?"  
  
"Nothing, really… I just called to let you know we're about to leave. There was basically nobody on the roads, so I'm guessing we're looking at around eight, your time."  
  
"Yeah, yeah, sure - but what's the deal? Are you good?"  
  
There was a noncommittal hum on the line. "Can we sort of do this later?"  
  
"Oh. So, it's a Joe Thing, huh?"  
  
Andy looked up at him sharply, pushing the plate aside a little. "They okay?"  
  
"Hurley wants to know if you're both okay? I think he's, like, a tiny bit less mad, kind of."  
  
"Yeah, I mean… everything in context, y'know? We're okay. Louis's a little pissed off about having to get in his cage, but he's gonna have to deal with it." He laughed a little, and Pete could hear Joe's voice in the background, saying something indecipherable. There was something off about the whole thing and it bugged him that he'd have to wait half a day to find out what it was - although, he could probably guess.  
  
"So, okay, you text me when you take a break, right? We're expecting you back here for dinner at eight, _don't stand me up_!"  
  
He hung up the phone and set it down on the counter.  
  
"Something happened."  
  
"What?" Andy asked, looking at him, worriedly.  
  
"Something horizontal, I'm guessing."  
  
"That's literally your guess all the fucking time, man..."  
  
"Are you gonna man up and eat the fucking egg, dude? You gotta get back into it at some point. You said it yourself: fat, protein, calories. Can't survive the apocalypse on like, carrots."  
  
"I'm not _desperate_ yet - it feels premature."  
  
"D'you wanna be gagging on perfectly good food when you _are_ desperate, dude? 'Cause I feel like that would be fucking dumb. The little chicky-dude is already cooked, you're not saving anybody."  
  
Reluctantly, Andy picked up a quarter of the egg and, after a moment of hesitation, shoved it in his mouth. Pete guffawed at the pained expression on his face.  
  
"It tastes like a fucking jello fart!" he said, chewing through his laughter, covering his mouth with one tattooed hand and then swallowing with a great deal of effort.  
  
Pete laughed until tears streamed down his cheeks and he had to bury his head in his arms on the counter. It was good to laugh; they hadn't done a lot of it in the last few days, for obvious reasons, and it was nice, even if just for a few minutes, to have the old Andy back. The Andy who was devilishly funny and did dumb stuff to amuse them when no one else was around to witness it.  
  
The day before had been hard on him. Pete drove them both up to Milwaukee, back to his mom's, first, to confirm that she wasn't there, and then back to Fuck City. There was no one; no Mix, no Kyle, nobody. The TV in the den was on Cartoon Network for some reason, on the kitchen counter someone's half-made breakfast ("It's Matt's, this is his phone…") had started to grow mould. He watched as Andy set about clearing things away, picking things up methodically, taking the trash bags out to the can in the front yard. It felt weird, not to have anything to do. He tried to help, but Andy snapped at him for putting cutlery from the dishwasher in the wrong part of the tray in the drawer, and he gave up, wondering what his own home looked like. He didn't know if he'd see it again. He didn't know if he'd get home one day and find Bearenstein's mummified corpse on his kitchen floor; she was only two, she didn't deserve to die like that. It bummed him out.  
  
His phone notifications had been quiet. He tweeted into the void a few times a day - _Sun still rises even if you're not there to see it._  - but the responses were few and far between and the ones that he did receive were bleak, asking when he thought they'd bring everyone home. It unnerved him, thinking about the little kids out there - the one who said her mother hadn't come home, the ones who'd talked of people being sick and being afraid of being left alone. He felt responsible for them. He wanted to stock up on whatever they could and travel around the country, gathering them up and taking them to some place safe, where every day was like summer camp and they didn't have to worry, anymore.  
  
Andy had pointed out the flaws in this plan - that Pete could barely take care of himself (which he resented), that they may not have enough resources to keep themselves going, that it was still probably child abduction even if the world had kind of ended - but he still wanted to help people, somehow. He felt like that was what he did. Whether it was his lyrics, or his old blogs, or tweeting and instagramming and all the other shit. People needed someone to focus on and believe would be there in tough times. That's who Andy was to Pete and that's who he was to those kids.  
  
He hadn't really known what to do when the situation had been reversed, though. When it was Andy he found sitting on the stoop, near where the trashcans were stored, wrapped around his knees with his shoulders shaking silently. Usually, Andy got sad-angry, yelling and wanting to smash something - like the quiet demeanor couldn't hold in the force of his feelings anymore and everything he'd bottled up needed to come crashing out, like an overstuffed closet in an '80s sitcom - but this time he seemed small and vulnerable. Overwhelmed. So, Pete just perched beside him, absently turning his feet in a little to hunch over his own knees and watch a line of ants threading its way along the joins between the paving in the drive.  
  
"I'm sorry, dude. I know how much you loved those guys."  
  
Andy lifted his face and turned it away, pressing his cheek on his arm instead.  
  
"I feel like, maybe, kind of… they got the best deal or something. I mean, maybe they got taken to space utopia or something. Maybe that whole thing with like, aliens being from the future is true, and they got to see actual hoverboards and flying cars and shit… Just, like, hold on to that or something, yeah? I mean, I'm still here. Butch and Sundance'll be back from New York, soon… The band'll be literally back together."  
  
"And what then?" Andy demanded, sitting up and glaring at him, like he was an idiot for trying to look on the bright side. "What do we do, when they get back and we're in a city where everyone else is gone? It's just us. No stores, no take outs - what're you gonna eat, Pete? When the Count Chockula runs out and the milk is sour, what are you gonna eat?"  
  
Pete blinked at him. "I mean… I don't know, I guess that like, there's gonna be a while where everything is fucked up, but… the army can't put a guard outside every store. Eventually they're gonna have to bring us aid, right?"  
  
"To who? You, me, Joe and Patrick? The only people in the city, as far as we know, because probably no one else was left? The places that are gonna get aid are the places where more people made it. Those crappy little towns along highways in the mountains. Not us, Pete. And we could maybe ride out one winter here, if it was just us and we were super careful with supplies, but if the utilities go out - which they probably will - we're gonna freeze! None of you are thinking long term. None of you realise that you can't survive in six feet of snow -"  
  
"Well, I mean, dude - there's a whole race of indigenous people who've been here for like, a thousand years or something, who'd kind of argue with that…"  
  
"Oh - so you know how to survive the winter, huh? Do you know how to catch and skin a buffalo? You made any bearskins, recently?"  
  
"There's no need to be an asshole - I have, like, skii gear."  
  
Andy gave a dark splutter of a laugh and seemed to claw at the air in exasperation. "You are all so damn naive."  
  
"Well, yeah, dude, we're not all fucking preppers, or whatever…"  
  
"Right! And do you have any idea how stressful that is for me? I'm gonna have to be mom to all of you, basically forever. I don't know if I can do that, Pete!"  
  
"Well, you're already basically the mom of this band, so…"  
  
"Being your tour mom and making sure Trohman drinks a glass of water before he passes out is not keeping you fucking alive!"  
  
Pete had looked at him steadily and said, "You kept me alive a bunch of times. Don't quit on me now."  
  
And he'd taken Andy back inside, helped him pack up useful stuff, loading boxes of tinned food into the car. Originally, stuck somewhere in the desert, Andy had suggested that they stay at his house, because it was ready for this, but he hadn't brought it up again and Pete was smart enough to realise that he didn't want to be there. The silence once they'd turned the TV off, no click of nerf guns or bands playing on the house-wide speakers, shook him. So, he'd brought him home and they'd watched old DVDs to take their minds off things, then slept in Pete's old room - the twin beds still there - waiting for the rest of their family to get back from New York.  
  
Because that's what they were, now. What they had to be. He just hoped that the others agreed as easily as he had, that they couldn't stay in the northern suburbs forever - there was nothing but nostalgia for them here.  
  
\---  
  
From the way Pete bounded to the door to greet the other two, when they arrived, you could be mistaken for thinking they'd been gone for two months, rather than two days. He launched himself at Patrick, who feigned a grin - poorly, and tried to drag him back up the stairs to the front door, Joe lagging behind with the dog over his shoulder.  
  
"You look like a fucking pirate," Andy told him by way of a greeting, as Pete and Patrick disappeared into the house. He was still a little hurt that they'd gone without him - left him behind, secretly, so it felt he'd been abandoned yet again.  
  
"A butt pirate," Joe corrected, hugging him with one arm, under the tattered flag Pete had claimed on the way home.  
  
"So… How was…?"  
  
Joe made a weary sound and shook his head. "You ever feel like the best thing in the world happened - like all of your wildest dreams came true - and at like exactly the wrong time, so in actual fact, it's basically super fucked up and the worst shit possible at that moment in time?"  
  
Andy looked up at him, questioningly.  
  
"Basically that."  
  
"Right." He hesitated in continuing, but felt like he should at least clue Joe in that Pete was weaving theories. "Pete figured you were probably having some kind of torrid comfort fling or something."  
  
"I wish it were that fucking easy, man…" Joe sighed, lifting the dog down and letting him lope up the steps to the house. "You're gonna have to like, watch your feet on all the eggshells, I think."  
  
By the time they got into the house, the kitchen door was mostly shut, with the murmuring of voices beyond it.  
  
"Oh," Andy said, pointedly. "I guess you're serious."  
  
"For fucking real, my friend."  
  
"So… did you two…?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Did you almost?"  
  
" _No._ It's way worse than that."  
  
"Worse?"  
  
"You remember that one time when I was definitely not crying like a little girl outside the Knights of Columbus hall, like, a million years ago?"  
  
"The time when you were definitely not having girl trouble?"  
  
"I was literally never having girl trouble, because none of the girls we knew were interested in like, giving me any trouble, but basically, yes. Turns out that not talking to the kid you've been hooking up with leads to, like, a decade of everyone feeling shitty and everyone feeling ripped off and a bunch of unresolved bullshit and being kind of in love with your best friend but both of you being too dumb to do anything about it until _after_ you're both married to a sweet pair of lady-people."  
  
Andy huffed. "Dammit!"  
  
"Yeah, imagine how I feel."  
  
"No, it's that it means Pete was right the whole time. He's gonna be insufferable."  
  
"Thanks, dude, you've got the priorities nailed."  
  
Joe dropped himself down on the couch in the Wentzes' lounge as if he'd been there eating Pop Tarts after band practise a week ago. It was probably six years since any of them had hung out there. The exhausted look on his unshaven face turned sad and he pulled out his phone, not scrolling through anything, just studying the beaming woman on the lock screen.  
  
"I miss her."  
  
Sighing, Andy perched on the edge beside him and rubbed his shoulder. "I know."  
  
"Do you ever feel like you're living a double life? Like, everything's real but nothing is - or like, you have two parallel lives and you know one of them's real and one of them isn't, but you don't know which one?"  
  
"Honestly, no. But I get that it's weird doing what we do. Like, half your life is in a bell jar and you can see it happening, but you can't get at the substance of it. You watch your friends giving up music and having kids, and you spend your time treading water until you're home."  
  
Joe snorted with a pessimistic smirk. "That's exactly not what I meant at all."  
  
"Then what?"  
  
He shrugged despondently and leaned down to pick up the dog pawing at his knees. "I had kind of everything. Like, all I ever wanted was to be in a band and have a decent relationship and all of that stuff, basically, but like, on a whole other level I wanted something else. And it was kind of like the whole Iron Man shrapnel situation, like, I had this whole life that was stopping me from dying a fucking nasty death from this old wound and I just… the electromagnet's gone, dude."  
  
"Well, Tony Stark's arc reactor was poisoning him all along, wasn't it? Eventually, he had to bite the bullet and let it go."  
  
"Well, yeah, but…"  
  
"But you and Patrick are okay, right?"  
  
Joe focused on stroking Louis's belly for a few moments before saying, "It's kind of awkward, right now. But we'll be fine. We got through worse, right?"   
  
There was a faltering optimism in his voice that Andy knew better than to trust. Internally, he braced himself for another plummet into freefall. It may not happen now, or tomorrow, but when everything became too normal for it to be low priority, anymore, it would happen. He just hoped the collateral wasn't as great as last time.  
  
They ate together in the vast kitchen, boxes of Kraft dinner that Dale kept for the grandkids, more artifice than real dairy, made with soy milk and toxic orange powder. They'd brought down a couple of boxes of canned food from Fuck City, just to tide them over, but the nostalgia of childhood comfort foods had gotten the better of them. It tasted sour and made him crave vegetables to compensate for the manufactured crap he was putting into his system. It wasn't that he always ate healthily, it was just that after days of protein bars he still felt like he needed something fresh and natural.  
  
He thought about asking if there was a traditional grocery store around - the kind that kept their produce on display out front, so that they could quietly claim some before it rotted. It had already been a week. Did the military downtown really care about a few wasted vegetables in the suburbs?  
  
But it was too soon. None of the others were ready, yet. They still couldn't comprehend that they were on their own, that if they expected to survive it wasn't all going to be radioactive cheese. He'd tell them in a few days, once they'd had a chance to settle down and let reality sink in. Maybe then there wouldn't be any breakdowns. Maybe he'd get up early and scavenge while they slept, and solve the problem that way.  
  
"So, have you guys been caught up on the news?" Patrick asked, pushing congealing macaroni around his dish.  
  
"Nope," Pete shrugged. "Shit has been real enough the last few days."  
  
"We probably should, though, right?" Joe asked, looking up from his plate, wide-eyed. "I mean, we oughta know if there's any plan of action for us losers who got left behind, basically. Like, obviously, I only really wanna hear that they're bringing everyone back, but if we're stuck here…"  
  
Patrick's fork fell onto his plate with a clatter and he skidded out his stool to get up.  
  
Pete watched him with his typical furrowed brow and looked ready to follow after him like a puppy, but Andy kicked him under the counter. He got halfway into a cry of indignance before shutting himself up at the look on Andy's face.  
  
Pete wasn't the only one watching him, though; Joe's eyes followed him to the back door and then dropped to his plate again, with a tired sigh.  
  
"You gonna give us the down-low or what?"  
  
"Pete, just leave them alone."  
  
"Didn't he already give you the 'down-low'?"  
  
"Not really."  
  
"Then he's probably not into me talking about, it either. Just give him, like, a couple of weeks, dude… Everything's pretty fucked up, right now."  
  
"More than Aliens Stole My Everybody?"  
  
"Yes." Joe put his fork down and pushed the bowl of half-eaten pasta away. "I never fucking liked this stuff."  
  
\---  
  
It was after midnight when Joe unlocked the car and picked Louis up to help him back in his cage. Patrick had come in after a little time to himself and seemed in a slightly better frame of mind than he had at dinner. He'd sat on the couch with Pete, watching TV quietly, laughing at old episodes of the Munsters. None of them had been able to face the news, yet. _Tomorrow_ , they'd agreed. Like tomorrow was going to tell them something different.  
  
He'd half expected Patrick to want to stay with Pete and Andy. The journey back had been quiet, they'd hardly talked for ten and a half hours. He knew it was just Patrick's way of dealing with everything, an emotional hangover from all the scabs that had been ripped off in the past twenty-four hours; he was probably afraid of saying something that would make things worse, prompt any further revelations that neither of them could deal with. It was weighing kind of heavy on him, too. But as soon as he stretched and leaned down to pat Louis and wake him up, Patrick uncurled himself from the corner of the sofa and slipped his feet into his sneakers, wriggling them until the fabric slid over his heel. None of them questioned it.  
  
"You wanna unload the car tomorrow?" Joe asked as he turned off the ignition in the drive.  
  
Patrick rubbed his face and half-heartedly said, "No, dude, I don't mind…"  
  
"What do you think's gonna happen? It's gonna get stolen?" he joked, trying to get him to smile.  
  
There was a tiny huff of a performative laugh and he unbuckled his seatbelt. "I mean, if things are gonna get worse…"  
  
The house was quiet, the natural creaks amplified in the dark, giving them an eerie, horror movie quality as they stood together at the bottom of the stairs. Joe fiddled with his keys for something to do, not quite sure what would happen, now.  
  
"Joe?"  
  
"Um-hm?" He looked up and gave him what he hopened was a cheerful smile.  
  
"I'm not… God. Look, the thing is, I'm not mad at you for being loyal to Marie… It's way more complicated than that, but I don't want you to think that's it, because your loyalty has always been one of the things I loved about you."  
  
"No, you're just bummed out, I get that, dude, I am too…"  
  
"Yeah. Of course you are, I know that."  
  
"Do you wanna talk it out?"  
  
There was a lingering pause before Patrick finally said, "Can we just go to bed? I feel like sleeping would go a long way to making me feel a little better."  
  
"Sure, lil' dude, of course," Joe nodded, sliding an arm around him to guide him upstairs. He hesitated at the guestroom door as Patrick let himself in, wondering if he should invite him to share his old bedroom, but Patrick said a soft 'Goodnight' and carefully closed the door in front of him.  
  
 _Well, I guess that answers that.  
  
_ He made his way down the hall, instead, Louis snuffling at the door ahead of him; he knew where he was sleeping, at least.  
  
Laying there, alone, but for the tiny furry body on the comforter, he gazed out of the window at the deep blue summer sky, inky and flecked with isolated pin pricks of white. It really illustrated the difference between the city and the desert, where a wide smudge and a billion stars hung over them.  
  
He preferred the idea of a handful of stars, because a handful of stars was 400 million places fewer for them to have to look to find them all.  
  
It wasn't long before his eyelids drooped and he sank into a disturbed sleep. He dreamed of his mom, coming into his room to wake him for school, sitting on the edge of the bed and rubbing his feet through the covers.  
  
He asked her where she was, why he had to go to school when he was twenty-eight years old, and she smiled at him, suddenly close enough to lean down and kiss his forehead.  
  
"Because you'll always be my little boy."  
  
He woke with a jolt in total darkness. Even the yellow of the streetlights outside was gone, and he sat up, reaching for Louis at the foot of the bed as he peered out of the window.  
  
"Fucking powercut," he muttered, sleepily.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
He nearly threw himself into the wall in alarm, before his tired brain and the weight at the bottom of the mattress reminded him that he knew the voice.  
  
" _Fuck_."  
  
"Sorry, I didn't mean to freak you out - you kind of woke up the second I sat down."  
  
"When did you become a fucking ninja?" Joe asked, rubbing his bruised shoulder.  
  
Patrick's soft hum of a laugh responded. "I just… it's weird being in your parents' house without them here."  
  
"Why? You stayed here without them when we were kids."  
  
"I dunno… that was just different. Before, they knew you were having friends come and stay, y'know?"  
  
"So, are you like… okay?"  
  
"Yeah. No… Well, sort of, but I kind of feel like I need to explain myself about something."  
  
"At three in the morning?"  
  
"My sleep schedule is fucked up. More than usual, I mean. And I just… I can't sleep when I feel like you think I'm mad at you and I'm _not_ , Joe, I just…"  
  
"You don't need to explain yourself, Ric -"  
  
"No, I do. I do."  
  
"Okay, well, I guess I'm listening…"  
  
"Actually… I'm not sure if this is an explanation or question, really, but… Who were they?"  
  
Joe frowned at him in the dark. "Who?"  
  
"The 'dudes'. The people who slept in your bed."  
  
"Oh." He thought about lying, or conveniently focusing on Marie's college buddies, just to make him feel better, but he didn't want to lie and he didn't see why he should pretend. What he and his wife did or didn't do in private was their own business.  
  
"I know that's a really invasive question, but I just… I kind of wanna understand, y'know? I mean, I thought you two were so solid…"  
  
"We _are_. That's why it gets to happen and it's okay, dude. It's only about what's going on down here -" he gestured to his lap and then poked Patrick's forehead, or an approximation of it, given that his eyes were only just growing accustomed to the lack of light "- and up here. What did you think it was? Love? No. It's just fucking… _fucking_. That's it."  
  
He gazed into the dark at the slightly white-blue tinted outlines of Patrick's lashes and cheekbones, watching him, seeing if he got it. The silhouette reached up self-consciously to his nose, to push up glasses that weren't even there.  
  
"Yeah, but… why them, whoever they were? How could you trust them? I mean - there are people, y'know, who'd use it against you -"  
  
"And there are people who'll be discreet as you want for money, or if they have something to lose. Or, like, some of us literally don't matter enough for people to care."  
  
"Yeah, and there are people who'd do anything for you if you'd only asked…"  
  
So, that was what this was about. Obviously. He sighed, a little sad at how pathetic Patrick sounded; he didn't want him to be that desperate for something that he'd we willing to reduce himself and the bond they had to that.  
  
"I would never have fucking asked, dude. Even if I knew you were into it."  
  
"Wh- ?"  
  
"Because you matter, yeah? Like. You're a person to me, not a fucking… anthropomorphosised sex toy. You're the one that got away, and even if none of that happened, you'd still be one of if not my actual closest friend. I couldn't do that to myself, or to you, or to Marie. That's how people get fucking hurt and mess up things for everyone involved. You don't shit where you sleep."  
  
Patrick sat quietly for a minute and then finally said, "Okay."

  
"Is it, though? For real?"  
  
"Yeah. Yeah, I'll be fine."  
  
"I don't want you to be 'fine', Patrick, I want you to get it."  
  
"I do."  
  
He wasn't sure what else he could say to that, that wouldn't seem argumentative. "Explain it to me, then?"  
  
"You didn't wanna make things complicated for sex. I got that."  
  
" _No_. Dude, you always, like, erase the parts where you matter. I didn't wanna use you so my wife could get off on watching us, because I respect you as a person, I love you as my friend and because fucking some dude whose real name you don't even know, for fun, isn't the same as having sex with the kid you fell in love with at seventeen and could only ever tune out for a little while, afterwards. Doing that, even if she knew how things used to be between us and how messed up they were, would have been cheating on my wife, and there's no way I would've done that, because it isn't what it was ever about. It's the difference between, 'I wanna do this _thing_ ' and 'I wanna do this _person_.' Those people were not, in any way, a risk to my marriage. You are. I mean, you _would've been_ a risk, if I thought you'd be into it..."  
  
Patrick gave a sad little snort. "Would I?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Joe tilted his head and caught his eye, shining with moonlight, and held it until Patrick nodded, rubbing his nose with the side of his hand.  
  
"Okay… I get it, I guess."  
  
" _Good_. Good, dude, because I didn't want you to think that like, being into you - or, like, not being - was the problem. Because it isn't."  
  
"Okay. Thank you. Thanks. I'm sorry I kind of made it a big deal… I feel kind of… sort of vain, now."  
  
"Oh, yeah, that's totally what you are: vain. You're not, like, the most disproportionately insecure person - probably _literally -_ on this planet."  
  
Patrick laughed and it didn't sound hurt or confused, anymore, just embarrassed.  
  
"So… You wanna sleep here?"  
  
Patrick shook his head. "Nah."  
  
"You sure?"  
  
"Yeah," he said, resolutely, giving Louis a small scritch and standing up. "I'll see you in the morning."  
  
"Okay," Joe nodded, reaching out and catching his fingers as he turned, squeezing them lightly before letting them slip away. "Hey, Ric?" he said, as Patrick got opened the door and stepped out into the hall.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"22nd August 2007. London - some scummy service alley. You were a little wasted, ended up a _lot_ wasted, after... Marie had been studying in Europe for months… You sort of accosted me while I was taking a smoke outside the afterparty. I think it's important that you know I was exactly one Charlie Anti-bullshit Intervention away from like, going with it."  
  
There was nothing but a soft laugh as the door was closed carefully behind him.  
  
\---  
  
When they woke up, the next morning, it seemed like the ice had thawed - but so had the the freezer. The powercut had taken out the refrigerator, not just the streetlights. When it came back on, they rescued containers of vegetables harvested from his grandfather's yard and chopped, ready to use, and cooked what meat there was, knowing they'd never eat it all before it became useless.  
  
It seemed, over the next few days, that it was setback after setback. Rolling blackouts had started - the news confirmed it. Fewer people were left behind than they'd thought, there weren't enough skilled staff to manage the utility networks. With nothing to do - nothing they could do - the weight of the situation began to seep under their skins. Patrick watched as Andy sat at the Wentzes' dining table with an out of date roadmap of the country, drawing lines in pencil to plan a route back to the West Coast somewhere. He'd been talking about Portland, although Patrick couldn't really see why - the east coast was closer, there had to be areas that were just as temperate on that side of the country.  
  
Joe had gotten quiet, over the intervening days. They were living like roommates, just like they used to when they were younger, they'd even spent a couple of peaceful nights alone at the Trohmans' house, watching DVDs until the power cut out again, then sat on the back porch, looking up at the night sky while Joe smoked his electronic cigarette because he'd run out of the real ones and there was nowhere to buy more. They hadn't talked any more about the situation between them. Mostly, Patrick wanted to forget any of the discussions had ever happened; that either of them knew any more or less than they had two weeks ago, on the morning everything started. He'd been okay enough dealing with it as an unrequited problem since last year - although in reality, it had been much longer than that, just not as close to the surface - now wasn't the time to lose his grip on the reality of the situation.  
  
Food was already getting a little scarce. None of them felt like eating much, but their choices were dwindling to canned and boxed foods, even with the things growing in Joe's grandpa's vegetable patch. It couldn't sustain all of them long term, it was a hobby garden. There had been arguments - small ones, born out of stress and differing perspectives - about whether it was okay to 'reclaim' / 'steal' food from the stores in the small suburban stores. They'd been warned about looting, and Patrick was afraid that if they were caught they could be in very real trouble - while Andy felt sure none of those people would be coming back and they had a right to survive, provided they took only what they needed. Joe was permanently irritable because he'd run out of cigarettes and tobacco in general. Pete wouldn't stop talking - constantly, it felt like - about what they should be doing. About how they could be leading people, forming a tribe and rebuilding society, as if they'd seen anyone outside of the four of them in weeks. Andy talked of him sitting on the roof terrace night after night, staring at the stars and telling him his son was out there like Peter Quill, being raised by alien foster parents. None of them were quite sure if he was losing it, or if it was just easier to believe that.  
  
It was a little under a month since it happened, when he came downstairs late one morning and found the three of them sitting in the kitchen. There was a palpable tension in the room and he stopped at the door, knowing something was wrong - feeling it like a bowling ball dropping into his guts.  
  
"Um… hi, _everybody_ ," he said, pointedly, frowning at Joe. He gazed down at his coffee silently and didn't respond.  
  
"Morning, sleepy," Pete said with his fake shark grin, which immediately made him want to turn and walk away, escape whatever they were about to tell him.  
  
"Okay, why are you here, man?"  
  
"We kind of need to talk," Andy said, matter-of-factly. "You're not going to like it, so we all wanted to be here."  
  
"If this is about -"  
  
Joe cut him off quickly. "It's not. It's really, _really_ not."  
  
"Then what?" he asked, edging nearer. He'd checked the news app on his phone before he rolled out of bed, there was nothing new - nothing official - so he had no idea what the fucking problem was.  
  
Andy pushed out the chair beside Joe with his foot and watched expectantly, until Patrick carefully sank himself down into it. A couple of times, he'd caught them talking. He'd go to the bathroom and walk back into the room to hear conversation cut off, or bump into them whispering in pairs. He'd assumed they were just gossipping about what was or wasn't going on between him and Joe - and the answer was a distinct 'nothing' - so he'd left them to it. Only now was he realising it was something else.  
  
"I'm gonna need one of you to fucking tell me, or I'm gonna flip," he told them with a taut, nervous chuckle.  
  
It was Pete who spoke up, bluntly. "We're gonna leave Chicago."  
  
Patrick laughed, assuming he was kidding to soften the real news. "Yeah, okay, sure."  
  
"Good, then that's settled," Andy replied.  
  
Patrick stopped laughing, abruptly. "What? No - are you kidding?"

"Dude… there's nothing here," Joe told him, slipping a hand under the table to squeeze his thigh reassuringly. His eyes were wide and shiny and seemed to flicker barely perceptibly. "We're not even staying in a place that matters to you. We haven't been into the city since we came back. There's nothing kind of like, _keeping us here_. Not really. We need to go someplace where we're not gonna be dealing with tons of snow in six months. There's not gonna be anyone to clear it, we're basically gonna be trapped. The gas has already gone out twice. The electricity is, like, temperamental at best, and eventually even the hydro-electric stuff is gonna give out. They can't run forever unmanned, dude."  
  
"No, I know, but - we're not there, yet, are we? I mean - they said on CNN that they were putting the emergency aid plans into place -"  
  
"Not here," Andy said, levelly. "We're on our own. They can't focus on everyone individually - they need to put the resources where the people are, and our best chance is to fend for ourselves. Or at least go somewhere that won't be this impossible to live in."  
  
He could feel a pressure under his throat - above his sternum and below his collarbone - panic rising to make it hard to breathe.  
  
"But this is _home_!"  
  
"I know, Ric," Pete told him, reaching out and catching his wrist across the table.  
  
"We came home on purpose -"  
  
"We came home because we didn't know what else to do, kind of. Now, we know what we need to do."  
  
"Well, fine. You go. I'm staying. I was born here and I'm gonna die here, so I guess that's what it'll be."  
  
"You live in fucking LA!"  
  
"Not by choice," Patrick replied, angrily. "This is my home."  
  
Joe sighed and sank back in his seat, the spot where his hand had rested now cold and uncomfortable on Patrick's leg.  
  
"Patrick, listen," Andy tried, "it isn't like we can't come back. When the country gets back on its feet, maybe then we can come home, but right now, we need to be pragmatic. We cannot survive here. We just can't. If you don't freeze to death or die of dehydration when the water gets shut off, you'll starve, eventually. Is that what you wanna do?"  
  
"There's a lake full of water like two miles from here."  
  
"Oh, fucking neat!" Joe cut in, sarcastically. "We can drink from the fucking lake, like it's not full of crap and we didn't all get an infection at least once from swimming in it, when we were in school. Listen. You're gonna make me play this card and we're both gonna be pissed off and degraded about it, later, but I just lost my wife. I am abso-fucking-not losing you next. So, quit being difficult about it, 'cause you know you're gonna wind up coming with us if we have to like, tie your ass up and shove you in a van to get you there. We're leaving. Period. You can start thinking about what you wanna take, or you can make it harder on the three of us as well as yourself. I'm sorry, and everything, but stop being a dick."  
  
Joe's chair clattered against the peninsula behind it as he stood up, snatching his mug as he left.  
  
Pete watched him go and then caught Patrick's eye, smirking. "Well, I guess you got told."  
  
By the time he'd agreed to think about it and the others had left to go for a walk around the villages, to see if there was 'anything happening' - a euphemism for 'anything to appropriate' - Joe was ensconced in the family room with Louis, watching Back to the Future again.  
  
Patrick sank down onto the couch beside him, and pulled up his socked feet so he could lean against his shoulder.  
  
"I'm sorry I was a dick," he said sincerely, adding, "even if I don't think the intervention helped, exactly."  
  
"I offered to tell you," Joe shrugged, shifting an arm to wrap it around him. "Andy didn't think I'd have the balls and Pete felt like he had a right to be there, so…"  
  
"Well, I've agreed to think about it, so…"  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"I'm sorry if I seemed like I was being an asshole, but… I really don't wanna leave Chicago. I feel like, if we do, then…"  
  
"We're not coming back."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Joe nodded slowly. "Fact is, little dude, if we go and nothing changes, we probably won't. Did you never see, 'Life After Humanity', or whatever it was called? In like, a couple of years, everything'll be fucked anyway."  
  
"Andy sounds like he wants us to become some kind of nomadic tribe or something…"  
  
"That's been his whole schtick for years, man. First of all, he wants to go to his mom's sister's place in Oregon. She has like, a little bit of land, or something. But mostly, I think his point is that there's some kind of ecodiversity around there, or something. I mean, like, my dad took me fishing on a trip when I was about thirteen, but I don't know shit about surviving in the wild - and I know even less about surviving in the city when there are no stores or anything left. I'm gonna run with whatever Hurley tells me is the thing to do."  
  
Sighing, Patrick closed his eyes and tried to imagine the suburbs without people. The lawns were already growing long - tufted and lush where they'd once been neat, cropped stripes. He could see the place changing and it upset him, but he tried to pretend this was natural, that eventually someone would come along and cut it all back, tidy it all up, just to keep things nice. It was absurd. They didn't even know if there was anyone able to deal with the floodgates, if summer storms got bad. He could still remember the flood of 1992, when he was in elementary school; they'd done a geography project on it. He knew better than to think everything would just right itself.  
  
"Can I sleep with you, tonight?" he asked absently, the mental images of the impending destruction sending shivers up his spine.  
  
"Uh…"  
  
"Like, in the same bed. Trust me, I got the picture on the other thing."  
  
"Then, yeah, sure."  
  
Sitting up, Patrick straightened his glasses and let Louis roll onto his lap, languidly. If only they had a DeLorean. Or a train. Or a hot tub. Just anything that would take them back in time, so they could be ready, even if they couldn't stop any of what happened.  
  
When night fell - late in the evening thanks to the long, early-July days - they slid under the covers, side by side, gazing up at where the ceiling should be in the darkness and the same, infinite sky outside the window that they'd watched every night since it happened. Waiting. Just waiting for something to change.  
  
And it didn't. Not that night. They curled close to each other like they had for years, even when Anna was in the picture and they were pushed for space in tour buses and on floors. Whatever they'd privately hoped it meant, at the time, it had just been friends looking out for each other, and that's what it was now. But that didn't mean that when Joe was asleep, face down and spread out on one side, Patrick didn't snake one arm across Joe's back and bury his face almost under the arm wrapped over the pillow, just to be certain he was there.  
  
\---  
  
Pete watched Patrick and Joe with obsessive protectiveness for weeks. He could see what was happening, could predict the dynamic change and the way it would change all of them.  
  
He caught a picture of them, one evening, as they packed up boxes of what they thought would be useful, sitting cross-legged on the floor at Patrick's house, side by side with an old photo album spread across their laps - photos of Patrick and his siblings as infants, Joe's arm around his shoulders, watching intently as Patrick laughed at childhood memories. He shared it, captioned, _I found the cure to growing older and you're the only place that feels like_.  
  
Somehow, not one of the kids who replied really understood what it meant. He wasn't totally convinced they did, either.  
  
He'd started writing stories, though. Stories for Bronx, to read to the stars in the hope that somehow, somewhere, he was looking at the same ones. He felt a little like the hero in a film and, at the end, all of his loved ones would be in a government bunker and he'd rescue them and they'd build a monument in his honour, or some shit. But it was all psychological damage control, numbing himself to the fact his child, girlfriend and ex-wife have been abducted by aliens, and he'd been left behind like Kevin at Christmas. Only there was no red-eye to get them back home to him. He didn't have a Jeff Goldblum handy, or an experimental spaceship to hi-jack. There was literally nothing he could do except hope that they were being looked after on some amazing planet somewhere. He wished on his pillow, every night, that he was there.  
  
The plan to move on had come from Andy, in almost the exact opposite way to how the band had got back together. He'd brought it up on blackout nights, down on the lakeshore when they paced the neighbourhood. They had to have a united front, he'd said. Bring Joe on board, because Joe'd be more afraid of dying slowly. They both knew that the only way to lure Patrick away from his beloved city was to bait him with the one thing he loved more. They'd both stopped pretending there was anything they could do about the two of them, any way of cushioning it or making sure it didn't go wrong; both of them were so obstinate that they'd be more inclined to pursue this whole thing harder, out of spite, even when they realised it wouldn't work.  
  
He'd watched Patrick curl up next to him on couches, feet pulled up under himself, taking Joe's weight on his shoulder on the days when he was too miserable to sit upright, missing his parents or his weed or the wife who was still more important to him than Patrick apparently was. But when his guard was down, on nights when they'd broken open the wine in Pete's parents' basement, he saw the way Joe looked at him, before he caught himself. Always silently chastising the kid inside him who had the chance all of them wished for, but was too afraid to take it.  
  
It bugged him that it was Joe sitting on the living room floor with Patrick. He didn't like being benched for dick he knew Patrick wasn't even getting. There had never been anything between them like there was between Patrick and Joe, but he'd always thought there was nothing between Joe and Patrick like there was between Patrick and Pete himself. It wasn't Joe that people called his 'soulmate' and it almost felt like the aliens had taken everyone close to him, and Joe had stolen what was left.  
  
It had reinforced his friendship with Andy, though, and he'd gone with him back to Milwaukee to pick up the van the MisSigs dudes kept in his garage. It was in his name, on account of the fact that he'd bought it for them, because that was the kind of guy Andy was. Whatever his friends needed, even when he was a broke kid himself, he'd find a way to help out. The drive back wasn't a thousand miles, but it was weirdly therapeutic to be on the highway with the windows down, knowing that they were going to be travelling again. Almost like tour. Almost like the world was still turning. And now, here they were, filling boxes with nostalgia dressed up as practicality, getting ready to leave the city behind them, again, while ivy cloaked it in green.  
  
\---  
  
It was Joe who was driving when the announcement came, on the highway skirting the southern border of Wyoming, on the wrong side of Denver. It was noon on the Fourth of July, an address from the President. His palms grew sweaty at the quiet fanfare, both pacified and terrified by the sound of Obama's voice as he greeted them.  
  
"Good afternoon, Citizens of America. Greetings wherever you are, Citizens of Earth. Today, traditionally, we celebrate our freedom. As a nation, we acknowledge our independence and the struggles our forefathers faced to secure it. It seems fitting, then, that today I'm addressing you to announce the first steps in a new initiative. An initiative that I hope will bring some stability to the country, which I know, from having been out in your villages and towns across America, has been a problem for all of you. The uncertainty, the lack of immediate clarity surrounding resources, has been an impediment to our recovery from this tragic event, from our ability to move on, as families and individuals, and as a nation.  
  
"For that reason, I'm speaking with you today to announce that we will hold a census, to help us better understand what remains of our wonderful country, and how we, your government, can best serve you in this hour of need.  
  
"Now, I recognise that, historically, some of you may have felt that public records of this kind didn't matter - that they didn't affect you, or they were in some way untrustworthy. That your information would be used for unsavory purposes. I am here to assure you now, this is not the case. We need to know who you are and where you are, so we can get help organised, get utilities prioritised in populated zones.  
  
"Ultimately, our brothers and sisters - our wives and husbands, our mothers and fathers and children - may be recorded as 'Missing: presumed dead' if not registered on the census. We recognise that some of you may be struggling. That your loved ones who may have left for work on that Monday morning, may never have returned and that priorities, like your homes and your family funds, may be inaccessible to you. We want to help you resolve that. We want to come together as a nation to rebuild. And the first place we can do that is our own neighbourhoods. Details of how you can notify us of your location will follow this address.  
  
"So, on this day on which we celebrate our great nation, I want to tell you that I believe in the United States of America. I believe that we, as a nation who now share so much more in common than we might once have imagined, can come together to rebuild a country for all of us. Let's start here.  
  
"Thank you all for your time. May your Gods bless you all."  
  
He slammed on the brakes on the empty highway, sending boxes tumbling down behind the second row of seats, canned food rolling around the floor.  
  
"Fuck's sake, Joe! What're you doing?" Andy demanded, rubbing his shoulder where the seatbelt had pinched from the momentum.  
  
"Didn't you fucking _hear_?" he demanded, feeling the air escaping him. "They can't do that! They can't just… they're giving up! They can't just decide people are 'dead', that's fucking - that's fucked up!"  
  
"Well, they have to do it sometime… Better now than down the line, when everything's even more messed up."  
  
"That's a shitty excuse! They could have just waited until we were ready - they could have… like, they could've done some kind of power of attorney shit to fix the problem of owning stuff, they don't need - they don't -" His voice cracked and he clamped a hand over his mouth, scrunching his eyes closed.  
  
He aggressively shrugged away the soothing hand Pete laid on his shoulder, overcome with claustrophobia and scrambling for the buckle on his seat, shoving the door open to stumble out onto the verge. He dry heaved, bent over himself, both arms clutched across his stomach, torn between retching and choking on the panic attack constricting his throat. There was salty water catching on his eyelashes and he wasn't sure if it was from almost throwing up, or anxiety, or purely the knowledge that they planned to declare his wife dead. It wasn't even a _month_! Shouldn't it be his choice as her next of kin? Shouldn't he have some say in this? Because he wasn't ready. He didn't want to do this.  
  
He wound all his fingers into his hair, searching for something stable to hold onto, and tried to catch his breath.  
  
Behind him, Patrick climbed out of the passenger seat and shuffled across to jump down out of the driver's door. He wasted no time in pulling him away a little and opening the bottle of water he'd grabbed from the side pocket in Joe's door, to offer him.  
  
Joe took it gratefully, realising that his hands were shaking. Patrick's smile was sad and sympathetic, and he knew with a heavily guilt that every time he was reminded that Joe wanted Marie to come home - that he still saw their marriage as valid and enduring - it must be hurting him. He tried to smile at him, wanting him to know it wasn't personal, but Patrick was fumbling in his pocket for a leftover napkin from the rest stop they'd found outside Ogallala, pushing it into his hand without looking up.  
  
"Kind of a shock, huh?" he said.  
  
Joe nodded.  
  
There was a creak of the van door moving and Patrick looked over to snap at Pete. "Get back in. Just give us a minute."  
  
"Thanks." He didn't want the others crowding him. He didn't want there to be more fuss. He'd already been anxious about the prospect of another long journey and the risk of running out of fuel like they had in Colorado… "This was literally the last thing I needed to hear, today."  
  
"Try not to think about it, y'know? It won't be that simple - they can't just do a roll call and assume everyone else is… _y'know_. There's gotta be official forms, and then applications and stuff… They won't do it right away. You'll get time, dude, I can pretty much promise that."  
  
"Yeah… Yeah, I know you're probably right, but I just… This is ultra-fucking-fucked up."  
  
"I know, dude. It is for me, too." Patrick leaned in a little and folded his arms around him; Joe copied, burying his nose in Patrick's shoulder. "Let me take over driving, okay? We can switch back later, or something. You need a little time to be bummed out."  
  
"Thanks, lil'dude…"  
  
"You're good, I've got you. C'mon."  
  
The others didn't say anything when they got back in the van. Pete had leaned between the seats and switched the radio to SD card, and was playing _The Smiths_ , Morrissey warbling _'Heaven knows I'm miserable now…'_ It was a little thing, possibly intended to make him laugh, and he was grateful for it as he curled himself into the door with his feet on the dash and switched on his lock screen just for a moment, before tucking the handset under his arm and closing his eyes.  
  
He didn't really sleep, but he dozed lightly, images running through his mind with the flashes of changing light over his eyelids.  
  
They stopped for food in a little town named Evanston, because it reminded them of home. Things certainly seemed a little more awake than they had, three and a half weeks ago. There weren't many other vehicles on the roads, but the ones they saw honked at them, and they passed convoys of military trucks every time they got close to the bases. They looked to be carrying cargo, which was reassuring; it suggested that there were stocks someplace, that things were being done about it.  
  
The thing that was missing, from all the stands across every state, were newspapers. No one was printing them, an older man told him, as he doled out his change a coin at a time. Not enough people to read them.  
  
The thing they did see was truckers. Out here on the main route from east to west, it seemed like plenty of trucks had stopped travelling, choosing to live out of the security of open truck stops. What would be the point in going back, he supposed, if their cities were like Chicago? They'd all been on the road - between cities, away from populous areas - and now they were stuck forever in limbo, their real homes redundant shells and no jobs left to work.  
  
It stayed with him for a long time, once he'd realised it, imagining nomadic crowds streaming along the highways to Travel Centres. Small villages of lost and lonely middle-aged men sleeping in their cab bunks outside Super 8s.  
  
Was that what they'd become, eventually? Sure, Andy had this great idea of living off his aunt's little ranch ( _'It's basically a really, really big yard…'_ ), but he hadn't been there in years. What if the place was uninhabitable? What if they, as a bunch of farm-stupid city boys, couldn't figure out which end of a chicken to feed? Then they'd be just as screwed as they ever were, only when things got the better of them, it'd be someplace he didn't know and if they found his body he'd be two thousand miles from home.  
  
By the time night fell, he was sat in the second row of seats, with Patrick, between all their possessions and the the cab. The window next to his head was tinted and he watched the moon through it, following faithfully alongside them, no matter how long they drove. At least they'd packed Hurley's bugout gear, this time - they had tents and sleeping bags and if they needed to stop, or if they broke down someplace, at least they could get by for a couple of days; they weren't wearing casino clothes, either. It wouldn't be the end of the world, even if it actually was the end of the world.  
  
Patrick was making soft murmuring sounds in his sleep and he ducked a little to kiss him on the top of the head, tenderly. It was for comfort, but it was also gratitude. For being there, still. For putting up with this, even though he knew that Joe's mind was elsewhere. He almost regretted agreeing to get the band back together, because even if he'd done it for Patrick, even if he'd sacrificed things to help it happen, he knew enough that life might have been easier on both of them if they'd never gotten over their fight.  
  
The first time they'd really had to deal with each other in years was when Joe walked into the practise studio, that day. Straight off the plane and still dragging his carry-on. It was the first time they'd really had to talk to each other in person since Pete made him go to the show. And it was the reddened cheeks and the fact Patrick had almost seemed afraid to approach him from the corner of the room, that had broken his barriers down. Everyone had vanished like a David Copperfield trick, leaving them to have their moment in private, and all the tension had dissipated in a wordless hug, fingers so tight they left white marks. And he'd felt it in his stomach like some kind of sense memory, the rush of old feelings he'd tamped down. It had frightened him, at first, thinking that he'd made himself vulnerable, again, but he'd coped. There wasn't really any danger that he'd fall into the same mistakes, because he had Marie and he was happy. Patrick was happy with Elisa, too, he'd thought.  
  
He'd been at the wedding in September, watched him make those vows, although they hadn't actually interacted all day - only in part because Joe was avoiding it. Patrick had over a hundred guests to greet and spend time with, it had been easy to disappear into another corner every time he mingled his way near. He'd done pretty much the same at his own wedding a year before - a statutory handshake and 'Thanks for coming, man' that Patrick had met with a hug and a 'Let's catch up after dinner?' that he'd managed to evade all evening.  
  
Instead, they'd left early and gone back to their townhouse. Marie had gone to bed cheerfully tipsy, and he'd stayed up in his geek room listening to pre-Andy demo tapes they'd made on the 8-track in his parents' basement - their voices lighter and happier and unburdened, sharing in-jokes between attempts at songs. He'd only shown up at the wedding for the sake of appearances, because he knew he'd look like an asshole if he refused to attend one of his oldest friends' wedding out of spite. He didn't know why, but it had made him nostalgic. He'd found those same pages of comic in a shoebox, hastily stuffed full of tapes and old cables that had broken in 2002, but he couldn't bring himself to discard. Perhaps it was because he was half-cut from the open bar or because, on some level, somehow, he'd sort of harboured some lingering hope that eventually they'd work things out.  
  
He was pretty sure either Pete or Andy had clued Patrick in, after the fact, though, because he'd texted from the airport the next day, saying he was sorry he hadn't had time to catch up and maybe they could see each other when he and Elisa were back from honeymoon.  
  
All he'd said in response was _Maybe_.  
  
Patrick hadn't said anything more for a month, but when he did it was a stilted reconnaissance mission, trying to feel him out on trying again. It had turned into an hour of not really saying anything, getting used to each other's voices again, filling each other in like the tedious letters his aunties shoved in Chanukah care packages.  
  
But he'd thought about it all night, once they hung up. Laid in bed with Marie sprawled under the covers, her hair fallen loose of its tie and her nightshirt fallen loose off her shoulder as she slept, even her naked breast insufficient to inspire him. So, when Patrick had called again, when he'd felt that hot rush in his belly at the voice on the phone, saying, "Hey, um. Hey, it's me. Listen, I'm afraid of what you'll say, so I just - I really, really want you to come down here and hang out for a while, so that we can work things out, y'know? I - I miss the band, is the thing, and -" he'd dropped the receiver back into is vintage cradle like it was hot.  
  
Patrick had called back, though, innocently persistent and apologising if his line had given out; and the plans they'd had - it was movie night, they'd ordered in - had been forgotten. Two hours in, he'd mentioned it and Patrick had apologised immediately - he hadn't realised, Joe should have said - but by then he was enjoying himself. Glad of a chance to vent and argue and listen to him apologise over and over; they could watch a movie any night, it didn't matter.  
  
Now, months later, as they wound their way across the states, and she was gone, he knew he'd been wrong: of course it mattered, but somehow, he no longer regretted it.  
  
\---  
  
They'd been travelling almost thirty hours when Andy nudged Patrick awake and told him it was time to switch.  
  
"Where are we?" he asked, rubbing his eyes under his glasses and looking around them. It was still dark. There were lights from a tiny Shell gas station behind them and a small, beige shack to the right. Beyond that, he couldn't see anything.  
  
"Rufus, Oregon."  
  
Outside the window, Joe and Pete air guitared simultaneously and exchanged a wiggle-fingered handshake.  
  
"Huh?" For a moment, he thought he might still be dreaming.  
  
"They insisted we stop here, even though nothing's open, except the gas station, so they could do their little Wyld Stallyns thing. If you need to pee, the guy'll let you in."  
  
Sleepily, he climbed out of the back row and stumbled into Pete's waiting arms.  
  
"Come on, Cookiejar, let's get some shitty gas station food."  
  
The man at the register was probably in his mid-fifties, broad-shouldered; maybe Chinook. He smiled and nodded as they entered, a quiet solidarity that reminded Patrick of stories of people coming together in times of crisis, that he'd only read about in sensationalist internet articles, before now.  
  
"What're you boys doing all the way out here?" he asked, ringing up the cans of energy drink and snacks they dumped on the counter. "Could hear you all chatting away; Chicago, right?"  
  
"Yeah," Patrick nodded, fumbling with his wallet to cover the pang at the thought of home.  
  
"Heading out for a better life, bud," Pete told him, massaging the back of Patrick's neck as if he was priming him for action.  
  
The man smiled at them again, but it was a little sad. "Did you lose people, back home?"  
  
"Everyone," Patrick said simply, sliding his card into the reader and digging his crooked index finger into the buttons. _1-9-8-4_.  
  
"Dude, your birth year? That's like, _super encryption._ "  
  
Patrick ignored him. So, what if it was his birth year? He'd used the same PIN since he was an eighteen year old with a crush, who thought he was running the Enigma Machine when he realised his birth year was also a version of Joe's birth date.  
  
"Have there been any, like, aid drops or anything, out here?" Joe asked, reaching over his shoulder to pick up his can of Monster.  
  
"Can't believe you didn't get the Rockstar one, you loser. Stay on brand!"  
  
"Hard to be a fucking rockstar when there are like nine people left on Earth, douchenoodle."  
  
The man smirked, watching them as he leaned his elbows on the counter. "We had some military down here about a week ago. _They_ bought food from _us_. Right over at the diner, there. I'm not expecting any aid soon."  
  
Patrick stared at him. "Then how are you gonna make it, out here?"  
  
"Same as we do on a bad winter: depend on neighbours to help a guy out. It's different than in the city, out here in little backwoods places like ours. Can't always run to the 7-Eleven. We're gonna be fine. And I hope you kids are, too."  
  
"Kids!" Joe snorted, toasting him with his can. "This loser is like thirty-five."  
  
"Fuck you, I'm thirty-four!"  
  
"Still kids to an old guy like me. Look after each other, won't you?"  
  
Patrick thought about the little town as he drove them through the night, Joe murmuring the lyrics to the songs on the stereo as they went; Pete and Andy in the back, half covered in Cheeto powder as they slept against the windows. If that little town had to rely on each other, what chance would there be for them? How could they possibly cope, just the four of them?  
  
"Do you like, ever actually miss her?" Joe asked, quietly, as they swept along another curve in the highway.  
  
Patrick frowned a little and brushed the hair from his forehead, absently. "Yeah. Yeah, of course."  
  
Joe just nodded to himself and fretted out the chords to _In Your Honor_ on his shin.  
  
"Are you feeling any better than you were at lunchtime?"  
  
He shrugged and chewed at the edge of his fingernail. "I guess stuff got less extreme in my head."  
  
"Well, that's good, right?"  
  
"We'll see."  
  
"In the end, it's just a piece of paper, y'know? It's an assumption, it doesn't make it fact."  
  
"It kind of does, though… I mean, basically all I have are a ring and that piece of paper. And… it freaks me out because I know she's gone and I need to deal with that, because I've just, like, told myself _maybe_ , or whatever, so then I didn't need to deal with the fact that she isn't coming back. But the thing is, basically, she isn't."  
  
"I mean… we don't, y'know... we don't know that for sure," Patrick tried, although he knew it wasn't convincing and deep down he didn't want it to be true.  
  
Joe gave him a doubtful look and shook his head.  
  
They drove on in silence for a while, the sky taking on a turquoise tint as the sun rose behind them, the tips of the mountains almost growing out of the darkened valley. On a whim, seeing a roadsign in the brown and white livery of local attractions, Patrick took them off the freeway and onto the narrow, winding highway into higher ground.  
  
Joe looked around them and cast him a side-long look. "Freestyling?"  
  
"How many chances am I ever gonna get to do this again? We just filled up a couple of hours ago, we've got this."  
  
Smiling languidly, Joe settled back into his seat, twisted at an angle so he was facing him, more than the view, watching him drive with heavy eyes. Louis snored on the seat between them; he'd been grumpy in his cage for hours at a time, so they'd let him out and he'd sat bolt upright, looking out of the window, or slept on their laps while they stroked him.  
  
"Hey, Ric?"  
  
"Yup?" he glanced over at him, concentrating on the steep curves of the wooded road, beginning to wonder if now really was the best time to do this. He was still a little tired, he didn't know the van well, that was a steep-ass drop back down the mountain if he fucked up, but it was too narrow to turn around and go back in a thing this size.  
  
"Thanks for putting up with my crap."  
  
Patrick laughed awkwardly. "Well, okay…"  
  
"I mean, like… the last few weeks have been kind of…"  
  
"They've been post-apocalyptic, man, it's what I expect - if you can ever expect an apocalypse."  
  
"The whole alien thing isn't exactly what we're talking about, though, right?"  
  
"Well, I definitely didn't expect to wind up telling my friend I'm in love with him and that I wished our wives into outerspace on accident."  
  
Joe snorted and rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. "That was no accident."  
  
"No, dude," Patrick promised him, quietly, "I'd never have done this to you for my own benefit, even if I wanted to. It doesn't make me feel good to see you miserable."  
  
"I'd be a whole lot miserable-r if didn't have this one little dude here…" Joe reached out and chucked his cheek lazily.  
  
He risked taking his eyes off the road for a second to smile at him and reached out to pat his knee companionably. "Me too, dude, me - whoa!"  
  
Joe sat up like someone had lit a firecracker. "What?"  
  
"That!"  
  
As they'd rounded the bend on the mountainside the road curved around in front of them, circling a small pagoda-shaped building, and beyond it, the first shimmer of sun picked up the surface of the Columbia River, Washington state across the water from them, Oregon folding away on either side.  
  
He pulled over, into the parking lot of the viewing station, curled around the base of the building, and turned around to nudge Pete.  
  
"Dude, you have to see this!"  
  
The air outside the van was chilly, despite it being the height of summer; the early morning and the altitude left their breath fogging in front of them. Patrick's glasses steamed up.  
  
It seemed like ages before any of them said anything. They just watched the breeze twitching lightly at the trees in the gorge below, in the distance, a bird was circling - too far away for a novice to identify, but large and silent and oblivious to anything but its search for food.  
  
When Pete looped his arms around his and Andy's necks, tugging them into a rough hug, Patrick stretched out his fingers, the tips brushing at the sleeve of Joe's hoodie until he turned a little and placed himself within his grasp, and then dragged on his arm until he shuffled up to join the group hug.  
  
"It's a new day," Andy said, quietly, tucking his arm around Pete and catching Patrick's shirt between his fingers.  
  
They all knew what he meant.  
  
"Okay," Pete said, suddenly wriggling himself out of everyone's grasp, "turn around and bunch up. I wanna share this with the kids. They keep asking about you losers."  
  
For a change, none of them protested; Andy took off his glasses and clutched them in his hand, out of sight, Patrick adopted his trusted squint-and-smile pose because he hated selfies and Pete would never delete them if he thought they (he) looked good. Joe tucked his arms around all of them and rested his chin on Patrick's shoulder, shifting while Pete took a few shots in quick succession.  
  
He posted the one of them all looking exhausted and goofy and like they wished they'd brought a jacket, with the caption _You can see my whole world from here.  
  
_ Later, though, Patrick felt his phone vibrate in his pocket; he pulled it out, assuming it was a news alert, and instead found a text message with Pete's name on it. Rolling his eyes at his encouraging look, he opened it up to a picture - another one from Vista House, of the four of them - only in this one, Joe's nose was pressed just below Patrick's ear and his eyes were closed, lightly; peaceful against a backdrop of disaster that the camera couldn't capture.  
  
Patrick studied it for a moment, feeling the flutter of butterflies below his sternum, before there was another quiet hum in his hand.  
  
 _This is sort of gross but I think Trohman's kind of in love with you._

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

_ And after all this time _ _  
_ _ I'm still into you _

  
  


When Andy was little, he remembered visiting this old house and playing on the swing on the biggest apple tree in the garden, with his cousin. He could still picture her red braids shining in the sun and the blue overalls she used to wear, the turn ups on the ankles getting smaller and smaller as she grew out of them. The dandelion clocks catching in the air as her feet kicked through the grass.  
  
She'd moved into the city when she returned to Oregon, after college - he couldn't remember the details of what she did, but she would probably have been working on a Monday morning. She certainly hadn't been at the house when he arrived, neither had his aunt. They were maybe thirty miles outside the city; far enough outside that he thought they would've been safe, but the house had been locked up - as though it had been left for the day - so perhaps she'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like a lot of people.  
  
It had been haunting, that first night. All any of them wanted to do was sleep by eight o'clock. Pete had claimed the master bedroom, and there had been a silent agreement - just looks and shrugs - before Andy let himself into the room he'd slept in as a child, one twin bed instead of the queen in Pippa's old room. He could hear the murmur of their voices for a long time before he fell asleep, his pillow damp because for the first time in weeks he had the privacy he needed. The others might be alright weeping in front of each other, but he was their level head, he didn't feel like he had that privilege. If he was struggling, the rest of them would panic.  
  
On the way to the cottage, they'd passed through the city, stopping by at Tyler's apartment. He knew it'd be empty, but he couldn't help but hope, or risk their being there and not linking up. Joe had gone to the door with him, and for once there was no smartass quip or unnecessary movie quote, just a friendly hand rubbing at his back. He'd been grateful for it, but it didn't change the fact that his one last hope for help had been scratched out.  
  
The house was filled with nostalgia, too. He had memories of his dad, here, whereas he hadn't in the house he grew up in, because they'd downsized when his mom was sick. There were pictures of his mom, of him and his other cousins as kids, of pets long since buried in forgotten corners of the garden… Getting to Chicago had been tough for all of them, but this was where things stuck in his chest and twisted.  
  
The day after they'd arrived, as he was warming down from his run, in the yard, there was a honk outside. He frowned, wondering what the fuck the others were doing with the van, and made his way around to the front of the house.  
  
Instead of Pete, an old man stood beside a well-worn vintage truck, shotgun raised and pointed at him.  
  
"Who in the hell are you, and what do you think you're doing in Alice's house?" he demanded.  
  
"Mr Turner?"  
  
The man dipped his gun a little and squinted at him in the sunlight.  
  
"Mr Turner, it's Andrew - Alice's nephew? I used to play with your grandkids, Rachie and Bobby, when we were small?"  
  
"Andrew? _Andrew_!" He all but dropped his weapon and hurried over to him with his arms out. "Oh, son! Son, it's so good to see you! Did you hear from your aunt? We didn't see her since… well, since those sons of bitches showed up."  
  
"No, I'm sorry."  
  
"I came on out here with Maureen, the night after it happened - put the chickens back in the shed. Didn't want her to come back and find they'd all been got, you know? Been stopping by every day to check on them."  
  
For a while, they talked. He'd aged a lot, since Andy had last seen him, back when he was in his teens, and he seemed almost oblivious to the magnitude of the impact on the world outside of the little community where he'd lived his whole life. He did have some information, though - the village back a little north, maybe seven miles - was a designated aid point and the military had shown up with sacks of rice and dried goods a week ago. Bernie had laughed and clasped his shoulder as he told him.  
  
"Pasta! They brought pasta, son! What am I going to do with pasta? A man can't wipe his ass on that!"  
  
It had been nice to know that Bernie and Maureen were still around. They'd been like surrogate grandparents to him when he was a child, and Bernie had brought her over to see him and fuss over them all, that same evening. There was a small network of local folk, they said, mostly their generation, who'd never moved out to the city, but some young folk, too.  
  
"And now, you boys," she'd said, squishing Patrick's face in her hands. "You're part of the family, now."  
  
The first few days were like camp. They had enough to get by, for now, and he wanted them to settle in and to get a sense of the place himself; he'd only ever seen it as the cool country house his cousin got to grow up in, and compared it to his life in the 'village' that was really part of a city. He'd always thought he wouldn't have gotten into any of the shit he did as a fifteen year old if he'd grown up here. But if he had, he'd never have met the idiots he was probably going to have to live out his days with, now.  
  
Sitting in the yard as the sun went down, around the stone firepit, drinking home-brewed cider or juice from his aunt's apples, he knew he was going to have to start teaching them to cope - to share the workload and to manage without him, because as life had recently proven, you could never be sure what might happen. He'd taken Joe paintballing with the Fuck City boys, years ago, and he'd proven to be a crack shot - years of Duck Hunt, they'd joked - but the idea of letting Pete have possession of anything potentially lethal made him nervous. He was fine for now, he'd changed his coping practices, wasn't relying on medication, anymore, but if things got difficult… Or, as seemed more likely, he forgot that actions had consequences and did something while acting like an eleven year old and hurt himself or someone else… And Patrick, for all his fiery temper, would probably turn to a quivering mess at the idea of hurting a living thing, even in self-defense.  
  
Maybe he'd start them on fishing.  
  
Or just collecting fucking apples.  
  
\---  
  
The countryside was kind of cool, in a way. Pete would have preferred to be in the city, sure, but if no one was there and there was nowhere to buy burritos anyway, why not? The stars seemed brighter, the air felt clearer and lighter in his lungs, he could hear birds of prey calling to each other across the landscape, and the water running in the river at the far end of the little plot of land. It made him feel like he was the protagonist in one of the stories he was writing for Bronx - adventures of a boy who saved the world, who people loved even when he made mistakes. A boy who realised when he'd made mistakes to begin with, because that hadn't always been his strongest skill and he wanted to show him that some people could figure it out for themselves and knew what to do about it.  
  
There was a night, weeks after they arrived, when Joe was in the kitchen washing up plates from dinner when Pete sent Patrick out to hang out with Andy and learn how to dress a wound again, and picked up the dishtowel to help.  
  
Joe looked at him sidelong for a second, his hair - longer, now, growing out like his beard after weeks left to their own devices - tied back off his face, his glasses smudged, and then handed him a soapy plate.  
  
"How's it hanging?" he asked suspiciously.  
  
Pete grinned his most disarming grin. " _Good_ , dude. Kind of getting into this whole rural living thing."  
  
"Uh-huh?"  
  
"Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of getting cravings for like the shittiest, greasiest take out you ever ate, but don't tell Hurley I said that…"  
  
Joe grinned and rinsed a bowl. "Steak."  
  
"Donuts."  
  
"Fucking, like - you know how you can get those like, challenge meals and stuff?"  
  
"Yeah, yeah! There's that one all over LA that does pizza that's like, bigger than the table!"  
  
"Oh… fuck, _pizza_. I miss pizza."  
  
"Me too, dude. Maybe we can make some or something, sometime."  
  
"Oh yeah, let me just go harvest my _mozzarella tree_!"  
  
Pete laughed, watching him. He'd had his good days and his bad days, but he was coming back, that irritating kid with the goofy laugh and awkward underbite, the one he used to think would forgive him anything. "So, hey, you find a mozzarella tree and the pizza's on me, okay?"  
  
" _Sure_ , dude, when I find one."  
  
"'Cause, the thing is, I wanna make it up to you, kind of?"  
  
Joe froze with his hands in the water, his broad grin dropping slowly to a purse-lipped frown. "For what?"  
  
"For kind of ruining your life. When we - I mean… when _you_ were a kid. And I was an adult who ought to know better."  
  
"Oh."  
  
Pete waited, watching him, wanting him to say, 'It's fine, forget about it. It wasn't so bad.'  
  
"Thanks, I guess."  
  
"But you… I mean, you accept, right?" he asked, hopefully, feeling stress twisting its way up his guts.  
  
"Accept, sure. But like… forgetting's still gonna be pretty hard."  
  
"Right. Yeah. Sure, I get that."  
  
Joe looked at him steadily for a moment. "Thank you for apologising. And for getting that I was just, like, barely dealing with being fifteen."  
  
"I just thought you knew who you were, y'know? You were always so fucking gutsy… If I'd realised…"  
  
"Yeah, well, can't do anything about that now, basically."  
  
"No, but… I'm sorry, little bro. I'll take better care of you from now on."  
  
"I'm nearly twenty-nine years old."  
  
"You're still a kid, to me."  
  
"You were younger than I am when you got married."  
  
"Yeah, and look how well I handled that."  
  
"That wasn't all you, dude, I mean, like… Leaving when the going gets tough, that's fucking spineless, insincere shit."  
  
Pete shrugged and nodded, wanting to agree, but knowing he was just as much to blame for his marriage failing. His therapist had pretty much rammed that home a long time ago. "So, what about you?"  
  
"Me?"  
  
"You and Lunchbox."  
  
"Oh." Joe's face drained a little and he turned back to scrub out a pan.  
  
"I mean, you've been sleeping together since -"  
  
"Sleeping. Yes. _D'you_ wanna share with him?"  
  
"Well, yeah, but I mean..."  
  
"I'm married, Pete, I -"  
  
"If this were a movie, you'd have been fucking by the time we got back to Chicago."  
  
"This isn't a movie. I'm not a fucking trope, okay? I need more time -"  
  
"What if this is all the time we've got?"  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"You don't know if those dudes are gonna come back and take everyone else that's here, or go full War of the Worlds on us. What are you actually waiting for? Is there some kind of schedule you think you gotta stick to, dude, or like…?"  
  
"I can't just -"  
  
"I know you know I know, and you know he would've told me."  
  
"So, what did he tell you?"  
  
"That he didn't know. Which, I mean - I totally called him out on being an idiot for that."  
  
"Yeah. He was." Joe laid the pan on the drainer and picked up the other towel to dry his hands. "I'm gonna go -"  
  
"No." Pete dropped the cloth on the counter and caught his arm. "Listen, man: you really need to figure this out."  
  
"We will, but it isn't even -"  
  
"But how long is enough? When does it get okay to act on something that'd make both you and him happier?"  
  
"When I know for sure she's -"  
  
"But what if you never know, dude? What if -"  
  
"They're gonna declare everyone dead, aren't they?" Joe snapped, and tugged his hand free. "Just leave it alone."  
  
Pete cringed at the sound of the bedroom door upstairs slamming. So much for making things better.  
  
\---  
  
It seemed far too soon that the leaves on the trees began to turn golden. How could it be fall already? Patrick was just getting used to the summer heat in a house without air conditioning - sweating, mostly naked, under thin sheets with Joe sprawled beside him. On the least comfortable nights, they'd lay awake with the windows open, listening to the crickets and the owls out in the woods by the river, not even really talking. One night, when the moon was full and kept the room bright through nearly-sheer curtains, the cloudlessness of the day leaving things blissfully cool, he'd found Joe's arm wrapped across his belly, hips tucked against Patrick's, face at the back of his neck. He'd wriggled back into it, clasping Joe's hand under his own, intending to sleep, but for a few, hopeful moments he was sure the writhing at his back was more than was necessary to get comfortable.  
  
He'd barely caught his lip between his teeth when there was cool air against his skin again.  
  
He rolled over, looking at the figure hunched on the edge of the bed, half-silhouetted against the window.  
  
"Joe?"  
  
"Go to sleep."  
  
He hadn't come back to bed, that night, and he'd waited until Patrick was asleep before coming to bed the next night, too. Patrick hadn't dared raise it. He'd been fine with the way things were - they were close, Joe was there every morning when he woke up, he was good with that, in his experience it was almost like being married anyway… He tried hard to tell himself he wasn't disappointed, either, but he'd always been an awful liar.  
  
"Sooo, why did Trohman sleep on the couch two nights ago?" Pete demanded in a stage whisper, as they watched his ineffectual attempt to help Andy coax the chickens back into their coop, overnight.  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"You didn't have a little lovers' tiff or something?"  
  
"Hard to have a lovers' tiff with someone you're not 'loving', right?"  
  
"I told you: he loves you."  
  
"I know. He told me himself _in New York_ , Pete. Just… some things need time. I'm not exactly going anywhere. It isn't even three months, yet. Leave him be."  
  
Pete shrugged and scuffed at the dirt with the toe of his sneaker. "I just hate seeing you unhappy."  
  
"Then it's a good thing I'm not unhappy, isn't it?"  
  
"Aren't you, though?"  
  
"I'm fine. I'm appreciating the things I do have in my life, instead of trying to make something happen too soon. Please: just let us work things out ourselves, okay? It'd mean a lot to me if you could respect that."  
  
Pete stared at him with his dejected puppy look, eyebrows twisted into an expression of wounded angst. "I totally respect you."  
  
Patrick hmmed knowingly, and patted him on the shoulder. Best to let him believe that.  
  
The forms for the census were circulated the last week in August. A man in a grey uniform with a clipboard and no discernible government department badges knocked on the door and explained the process to Andy as the 'householder', while Patrick watched from the arm of the easy chair.  
  
The next morning, after Andy sat them down one by one and asked for the details he couldn't answer himself, Patrick walked into the bathroom and found a platinum ring on the window sill. He picked it up and studied it as he brushed his teeth, looking at the initials engraved inside. _MWG_.  
  
"You forgot this," he said, placing it next to Joe's plate at the breakfast table and making himself some coffee from the jar of granules on the counter. "Didn't want you to lose it."  
  
"Oh. Thanks, yeah."  
  
He watched as Joe slid it back on to his hand and glanced over at him self-consciously. He didn't ask, but when the only ring around Joe's finger again the next morning was a pale pink tan line, he realised that maybe it hadn't been a mistake at all.  
  
\---  
  
Kind of the worst thing about living in Andy's aunt's little cottage, was the lack of space. All his life, Joe had had his own room, his own space to retreat to - even in the apartment, where space was of a premium, he got to have a room for his things and his music and to be by himself to put his head back on straight, sometimes.  
  
Because, the thing was, it was getting tough to be around Patrick all the time. He could feel himself weakening to it, to the feel of another warm body at night, someone he would gladly have devoted himself to as he had Marie, at the right time. But that wasn't how life had worked out and it was hard to explain to Patrick - or Pete, for that matter - that he still felt a duty to her, even if she was gone for good. The thought of their situation being reversed, and her moving on to someone else in just a few months, pinged all of his complexes. It didn't seem fair to do the same to her.  
  
In some part of his mind, uncited and vague, was an idea he'd picked up that the grieving process took a year. He'd given himself that, on some absurd, pragmatic whim, as a line in the sand - a time when it would seem less callous to move on. When he'd have some realistic reason to accept that she was lost, like her necklace claimed by the waves in Hawaii. Eventually, it had gotten dark, and they'd had to stop sifting their hands through the sand. He'd promised to replace it, but they'd never found the right one.  
  
The problem was, he'd loved Patrick before and he'd been falling for him again when it happened, although he hadn't been ready to admit that to himself; and he knew Patrick felt the same. It wasn't exactly a question of moving on from her, Patrick had preceded her, which made it feel even more dishonest. Like he'd waited for her back to be turned before falling directly into Patrick's arms.  
  
And in the meantime, he was afraid - if Patrick couldn't understand, would those feelings he'd so desperately wanted to be the subject of, once, fade away, in time? Would he fuck up his chance yet again?  
  
It was hard to lay beside him, every night, the heat radiating from Patrick's bare skin, remembering the things they'd done eleven summers ago. On the anniversary of the tour ending, he curled against him, only really seeking the comfort of another person, but Patrick had been too willing for it to be that simple. He'd burrowed himself back into Joe's arms, soft and warm and sighing quietly, and Joe's heartbeat had quickened so couldn't help but press closer, his hips rolling as he sought a way to be as intimate as possible. It was a tiny gasp that brought him to his senses and jerked him back and out of the embrace. It was too late, though. Mortified, he'd run away, spent a night berating himself for being disloyal to Marie and for leading Patrick on when he couldn't deliver.  
  
Not long afterwards, he removed his wedding ring and zipped it into the passport pocket on his travel bag. He didn't deserve to keep wearing it.  
  
The truth was, he was starting to get depressed. He'd dealt with it on and off since his teens and he knew the first creeping fingers of it at the back of his neck. He wasn't happy and he wasn't unhappy, it was distinct from that. He was confused and frustrated and still grieving, but the longer they were together, with every evening they spent playing music to each other on the acoustic guitars Patrick had insisted on bringing, sitting in the garden with his feet in Patrick's lap as the sun went down, the more he realised that this was what he wanted. It was what he'd always wanted, and he was depriving himself of the love and focus he needed, and depriving Patrick of the love that was already his.  
  
Marie wouldn't want that. She wouldn't want him to be miserable, she wouldn't want him to miss out on a second chance with someone she knew and cared for.  
  
He was the first of them to have a birthday, after it happened. The first to have to pretend to celebrate something that only made things feel worse. There were no presents, nowhere to really go out and celebrate. The bar in the village had closed because there was nothing to serve and all the locals could make their own moonshine, if they wanted to.  
  
Patrick wasn't there, when he woke up. He wasn't in the room or the rest of the house. Andy was up and exercising on the lawn, and Pete was still asleep. It was a little odd, because Patrick was pretty much nocturnal when left to his own devices, and every day since they'd been there Joe had woken up first. Perplexed, he made himself some coffee and sank onto the porch swing with Louis on his lap, feeling sorry for himself. He'd sort of planned to wake up that morning and cuddle with him a little and try to talk out where they were. He couldn't fix everything or be what Patrick wanted right away, but he could promise him that he was working on it. He'd been looking forward to getting the conversation done, to letting go of things a little. Patrick probably hadn't even remembered - they all had more important things to worry about than it being the anniversary of his mom popping out a person.  
  
"Aw, you're up... I thought maybe you'd sleep in…"  
  
Joe looked over to the kitchen door, his heart skipping a little, excited to hear Patrick's voice although it sounded a little disappointed to see him. "It's like ten thirty…"  
  
"Well, yeah, but… I wanted to be back before you woke up."  
  
"Back from where?"  
  
Patrick looked at him for a moment, the familiar, coy pinch of his bottom lip between his teeth - the expression he'd had on his face in a parking lot in Tulsa eleven years ago, as he worked the button on Joe's shorts - and shrugged. "I needed some help with something."  
  
"Right…?"  
  
Suddenly, Patrick’s hand was grabbing at his, tugging him out of his seat and pulling him into the kitchen.  
  
"I know this won't be anywhere near as good as your mom's, or anything, but… we have all these apples, and I just thought, 'Maybe I can do something decent, y'know? Maybe I can make him happy for a minute'."  
  
On the counter, sitting on a floral plate, was a large ring cake. It glistened with what looked like honey, topped with thin layers of baked apple.  
  
"Are you kidding? _Dude_."  
  
There was a lump in his throat. He tightened his fingers around Patrick's, pulling him nearer to wrap him in a tight hug, kissing him on the cheek as he did. Patrick didn't hesitate in tucking his arms around Joe's waist, tightly.  
  
"I mean, Maureen did kind of a lot of the work - did you know they keep bees? - but I wanted you to know that even with all the stuff happening, we still knew it was your birthday and it still matters, y'know?"  
  
"Dude, I…"  
  
"It's not much, I know, but -"  
  
"Yes, it is." He pulled away a little, rested his forehead on Patrick's, enjoying the soft rush of a modest laugh against his lips. "It means, like, the whole world, pretty much."  
  
"Don't oversell it," Patrick said, but he could hear the grin in his voice, "it's just a cake, I mean…"  
  
"It's not 'just a cake'. It's the only gift I'm gonna get, today, and it means the whole fucking world to me, right now."  
  
The fingers at the small of his back curled into his t-shirt a little. "Yeah, well… you mean the world to me, so…"  
  
"I know," Joe told him softly, because he did know and he was grateful, and increasingly, the feeling was mutual.  
  
"If you're gonna birthday fuck, do it in your bedroom," Pete's voice told them as he walked in, yawning noisily.  
  
Immediately, Patrick withdrew and nudged him away, turning to move out of reach guiltily. Joe tried to catch him, but he just flashed him a small smile and picked up the kettle.  
  
"Happy fucking birthday to you, too, asshole," Joe muttered, flipping Pete off as he made his way over to the back door to gaze outside and see where Andy was. At the counter, Patrick was covering over the cake with the bottom half of a tin, and the moment was gone.  
  
\---  
  
"I swear to God, Pete, if you ever do that to me again -!"  
  
"Calm down, dude, I was just kidding…" Pete said, as if he were being dramatic, and Patrick wanted to slap him a little more.  
  
"Well, y'know what? He's right: your jokes aren't funny."  
  
"Well, that's pretty fucking mean…"  
  
"So is humiliating me when I was - we were having a _moment_ , you self-centred asshole, I can't believe you ruined it!"  
  
"So, go feed him some cake. They say a way to a dude's heart is through his stomach, right?"  
  
Patrick thumped him in the belly, lightly, an irritated warning shot. "You just don't get it because you've never actually loved anybody as much you as you love drama. I don't want drama! I just want for things to sort of, y'know - work out. Gently. By osmosis. I don't need your help."  
  
"Seems to me like you do…" Pete grinned at him, the wide, stupid one that never failed to make Patrick laugh, and waggled his eyebrows.  
  
"That's gross." There was already a happiness swelling in his chest, though. He'd been willing to wait - for years, if that's what it took - but he could feel it, the barriers slipping away, the time getting closer when they'd be ready to try.  
  
And as the days grew shorter and Andy made them spend more time harvesting what was growing in the garden and foraging in the woods, and they went down to the Turners' place and helped them do the same, things did start to get cosier. It wasn't unusual for Patrick to spend the evenings slumped against Joe's chest on the couch, his arm wrapped across his belly. The lengthening nights gave them time to spoon together in bed, dressed in old flannel pyjama pants and fading t-shirts. Neither of them panicked, anymore, when the closeness got to them, they just ignored it or laughed about it and Patrick was just relieved to know that being close to him had any effect on Joe at all.  
  
Sometimes, when the others weren't around - they'd all agreed to help out with a community school for the kids living nearby, but they couldn't learn history, literature, music _and_ math all at the same time - they'd talk about how nice it would be for it to be just them. Their own space. Their own home. They hadn't even really kissed but, more than ever, Patrick was sure that things were falling into place, even if he doubted they'd ever bring themselves to leave the other two.  
  
By the time Hallowe'en came round, they were all beginning to feel part of the little rural community. Pete was enjoying himself the most, revelling in the sense of importance - the kids were excited to know Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy, even the ones too little to really know their music; the parents were all flattered that a celebrity would be willing to engage with the Little People like them. He felt needed and wanted, and that kept him afloat when he couldn't bring Bronx to their little harvest festival or the Hallowe'en party they set up for the kids in the old bar they'd turned into a community centre.  
  
It was at the party, late in the evening, when the younger ones were asleep on the seats of old vinyl booths and the tweens and teens were bopping on the dance floor to Pete's spooky playlist, that Joe said he wanted a smoke and would Patrick join him outside. They sat together on the lid of a yellow grit bin in the parking lot, Joe's arm resting around Patrick's shoulders, loosely, as their breath fogged on the fall air. It had been his and Marie's second wedding anniversary, three days ago, and he'd been quiet, since. Patrick hadn't pressed him about it, he knew it was difficult for him, that he was still dealing with a lot of guilt about what happened - about what was happening, now - but he'd done his best to be there, or not be there when he needed time to himself, and Joe seemed grateful.  
  
"Do you remember, like, way back before everything, when we played our first ever Hallowe'en show, at DePaul, while Pete was still there? We were like, first band on, so we got to spend basically the whole night hanging out?"  
  
Patrick grinned at the memory. He'd let Pete's girlfriend at the time draw cat whiskers on his face in eyeliner. "TJ kept trying to pick up college girls and you made me dance to the Monster Mash with you."  
  
Joe smiled and nodded, exhaling smoke - real smoke, courtesy of the community black market. "That night was the first time I really looked at this dorky kid from my band, all sweaty and gross, Sharpie Xes on your hands because you were only seventeen, and I thought, 'I really wanna make out with this weirdo.' But I was kind of lame and awkward and I didn't have big enough balls to do it. I wish I had, because then you wouldn't have thought I was just, like, doing it as a tour thing."  
  
"Aw," Patrick cooed at him, leaning his head on Joe's shoulder and rubbing affectionately at his thigh. "I wish you had, too."  
  
There was a long pause as they let the moment ring and Joe finished his cigarette, dropping the butt on the floor and grinding it under his toe to put it out. Finally, turning a little and speaking close to Patrick's forehead, he asked, "What about now?"  
  
"Now?" Patrick asked, twisting to look up at him without lifting his head.  
  
"I'd kind of like to kiss you, but after everything... I don't wanna assume…"  
  
"Oh, you should. You should totally assume," Patrick told him, unable to suppress a grin.  
  
For someone who'd been sleeping with his fingers tucked inside Patrick's waistband for weeks, Joe was unnecessarily hesitant and Patrick found himself straightening up to cup his cheeks and ensure that if they were doing this, they were doing it properly.  
  
It only seemed to take a moment before Joe's confidence returned, fingers gripping a fistful of Patrick's cardigan as he leaned into him, the urgency of it squeaking in his throat, making them both smile as their lips moved.  
  
It had been so long since they'd done this; back then, there had been no beard but Joe's lips were still as soft and it was like muscle memory took over - Joe's hands tight on his sides, Patrick half on tiptoes to press their hips together.  
  
A childish giggle from behind them made them break apart quickly, embarrassed and straightening themselves as they tried to look like nothing was going on for the sake of the twelve year olds peering around the corner of the building, quickly ushered away with hasty apologies from one of the mothers, laughter in her voice.  
  
"I swear to God, I thought I was about to have to knock Pete out, for a second, there," Patrick chuckled, overwhelmed with nervous energy and pulling Joe back to him tightly. He grinned so hard his face hurt as Joe enveloped him in a bear hug, both arms wrapped across his shoulders and his chin propped on Patrick's head.  
  
"I think we should knock Pete out anyway," he said. "I'm pretty sure he was supposed to be keeping control of the younglings."  
  
"More like they'd be looking after him…"  
  
Joe smirked and looked down at him, the streetlights shining yellow in his eyes, his pupils wide. He leaned down a little and gently bumped their noses together. "I kind of didn't come out here to talk about Pete, by the way."  
  
Patrick grinned back at him and pushed himself onto his toes to bring their lips together again. It was less hesitant, this time, more deliberate; deeper. More like early practise sessions in the back of the old van, more like the Joe he remembered.  
  
They rested their foreheads together when they broke away and took a moment, each too overwhelmed to really speak, at first.  
  
"So, um…?" Patrick tried, after a few minutes.  
  
"Yeah," Joe nodded, eyes closed.  
  
"'Yeah'-what?"  
  
"Pretty much anything…"  
  
He laughed and pulled his head back a little. "Cool, you're on chicken duty for me this week."  
  
"Well, I was thinking about asking if, like, I could be your significant other, but I'm not actually so sure, now…"  
  
Patrick's laughter petered out and he looked at him soberly, letting his grip slide loose until he could take Joe's hands. "Are you sure about this?"  
  
"You've been mine for a really, really long time."  
  
"But - Marie -?"  
  
"You were mine before I even met her."  
  
"You're still married, though, right? I mean, are you _sure_ \- ?"  
  
"Are you trying to talk me out of it?" Joe asked, but he wasn't stupid enough to really believe that was the case, and Patrick squeezed his hands over-tight, scowling.  
  
"No, of course not, but I just don't want you to feel like you need to do this now, if…"  
  
"I do, Ric. I do, because the whole world got fucked up and you're the one really good, consistent thing I have in it, and I'm exhausted from feeling guilty about that. Marie's gone. She's gone, and she's been gone for nearly a quarter of the time we were even married, and I just wanna be happy, now."  
  
Patrick sighed and nodded, jerkily, burying his face in the crook of Joe's neck. "Then yes. Yes, let's do this."  
  
He could feel the laugh of relief through Joe's chest and echoed it as Joe sighed and said, "Neat. Now I get to have an anniversary that's actually _on_ Hallowe'en, like I always wanted..."  
  
\---  
  
They didn't tell the others at first, although Andy soon heard from eight year old Sam Blythe, who told him his sister had seen them 'doing sex' in the parking lot, leaving Joe to explain that they should give the kid a biology book or send her to NASA because she'd apparently invented a time machine.  
  
In fact, it was a few weeks before they even got that far and when they did, it was nothing like the meaningful, tender night he'd pictured. Instead, it was an unplanned, muffled scramble in the bathroom after Patrick almost forgot to brush his teeth before heading to Thanksgiving dinner at the Turners' and Joe was still in there, cleaning his. They weren't as quiet as they'd thought, either. When Joe got back downstairs, pushing Patrick ahead of him, flustered and beaming, Andy was staring pointedly at the clock with his arms folded. He didn't say a word, but his face said plenty. He still sneakily gave Joe a low-five on his way out the door, though.  
  
A few months earlier, Joe would have found it hard to find a single thing to feel thankful about, but for all the horror and devastation he'd experienced, he could look around him and count the people on the trestle tables in the lamplit barn as friends - family - now. Whether it was the comforting grandparentiness of Bernie and Maureen, or warm neighbourliness of Jon and Colleen or Rachel and Steve, and the small army of kids they had between them, or any of the other local characters who'd welcomed them into their community so readily. People who'd done little more than quirk an eyebrow when they realised he and Patrick were more than best buds, other than to push another cup of questionable beer into his hand, muttering about some cousin or other and his partner.  
  
In his hand right now, though, was Patrick's - clutched tight under the table cloth while Pete said grace, because he did responsible shit like that now, like he'd found the character he wanted to play and had gone the full Daniel Day Lewis. Joe was happier whispering, _Rubba dub dub, thanks for the grub_ , at Patrick to make him splutter with laughter, completely inappropriately.  
  
He was thankful for all of it, because they'd all seen the stories on TV - what channels were still on air, now - the elderly people isolated because their caregivers were taken, the children orphaned… He was still here, and he had people he loved and a support network of found family that he never knew he'd need until they were there.  
  
And Thanksgiving gave way to Christmas and Christmas to Valentine's Day and then Easter and before any of them were ready for it, it was Pete's birthday and a whole year had passed. He couldn't help feeling strange that day - wanting to feel sad for everything he'd lost, missing his mom and dad, and Sam; wondering what had happened to the woman he'd loved so much until she wasn't there - but mostly, he felt nervous. He kept finding his eyes casting upwards, nervously waiting for something to happen, but it hadn't. It was a peaceful, clear day and he couldn't help thinking how big and blue and beautiful the wide open sky was. It seemed infinite blue, but he knew that it wasn't and that beyond their atmosphere was endless darkness.  
  
They still talked about their wives, sometimes, wondering how different things would be if none of this had happened - if Patrick would ever have said anything, if Joe would have faced up to his own feelings - and they told themselves they would have, even if neither of them thought it was true, because it was easier to believe that this was how things were meant to be.  
  
But they were happy. Not just content with the best of a bad situation, _truly_ happy. He still woke up every morning and found himself catching his breath that his teenage dream really had come full circle, like everything between falling asleep in the van on the way back through Iowa and the morning after Thanksgiving, had been a dream. It seemed absurd to both of them, now, to think that all those years had happened in between, but the tattoo on the side of his ring finger reminded him every day that there was a whole part of his life that had been there, and wasn't anymore. He still missed her, every now and then.  
  
_"I still love her, in the same way I still loved you, when I started dating her… We were together like a quarter of my life… I can't just, like, forget about that, basically. I still feel like I owe her for all the years she stuck with me when she could probably have, like, found someone easier to be around."  
  
__"I know… I mean, I married Elisa for a reason, y'know? A lot of reasons... It's just that I didn't need any reasons, with you. I just do."  
  
_ When he had tougher days and Patrick didn't know what to say, he'd try to imagine her voice, remembering the things she'd tell him, the normality she'd invoke in the middle of an anxiety attack. And it helped, it did, but it was still Patrick whose arms he'd gratefully crawl into when he was tired and calm and could bear to be touched again. Nothing had ever felt as good as those moments.  
  
Their first Christmas had been quiet. They hadn't really marked the holiday, just spent the day together, acutely aware that people weren't there to celebrate with. None of the community had,really, other than the ones with small children - it wasn't anything like Thanksgiving, people were thankful for what they had, but most seemed to have had their beliefs so shaken that they'd distanced themselves from religion. But the second Christmas was different. It hadn't mattered much to Joe, before, he'd celebrated it for Marie but more to be supportive than because he cared about the holiday; but this year it was about recovering. It was for all of them and it didn't have anything to do with God or holy babies or any of that. It was about seeing the look on Pete's face when he found the box of decorations, and how happy that had made Patrick, or how for once the frown lifted from Andy's brow because he remembered the felt gingerbread man from when he was small. They'd picked a sapling from the wood down by the river, and it didn't matter that the baubles had seen better days, or the fact a handful of the lights didn't work, they were still there, all of them, and this year things were getting better.  
  
He knew they were better, because in the early hours of Christmas Eve he'd been snuggled in the easy chair with Patrick across his lap and Louis on Patrick's, in front of the fire, and it was all that mattered. It felt normal, now, to be living this life. With these people. With this person.  
  
They'd already been together as friends for so long, had gotten past the awkward first stages so long ago, that there had never been any real tension. No ambiguity or uncertainty about whether this would last more than a few dates - no fear that the shine would wear off after a night on the couch eating take out, in sweats. And not just because there wasn't really such a thing as 'take out' anymore. Patrick had been there to help him deal with the emotional upheaval, and the guilt had slowly blended into the background. He still felt it - they both did - but they also knew they couldn't bring anyone back and that life could never have just stopped, frozen in time. They'd had more than a year to find their stride; they'd shared a bed and a home from the start, they washed dishes together, dealt with the chickens together, their new friends recognised them as a couple as if they always had been.  
  
What they'd forged for themselves out of the wreckage was real and it was good for both of them and there were nights like this, when things were quiet and they were alone with Louis and the ticking of the clock in the kitchen, that it almost felt like things had turned out for the best.  
  
In the fire light, Joe kissed Patrick’s temple softly and whispered, "I love you," into his ear. It wasn't the first time he'd told him, not by a long way, but in that moment, by the  
glow of the fading fire, it felt like Christmas had finally given him something he wanted.  
  
Smiling, still scritching between Louis's ears, Patrick looked back at him for a moment and leaned nearer to bump their noses lightly, and softly said, "I know."  
  
Joe gaped at him. "'I know'?! How - since when are _you_ fucking Han?"  
  
"Since I was like four and I had to kindergarten-smooch with a Princess Leia, instead of my own real-fur Chewie."  
  
He laughed so hard at the indignant expression on Joe's face, that Joe tickled his belly until both he and the dog rolled off the chair, and then chased him upstairs, leaving Louis to fall asleep by the grate.  
  
By the time they heard Andy starting to stir, next door, he'd made sure Patrick had told him he loved him at least four times.  
  
It was on one of those nights, still awake as the May sun rose, as Joe lay with his face on Patrick's naked stomach and his hands tangled in Joe's hair that Patrick said, "I've been thinking…"  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"I think I'm gonna go ahead and request those forms."  
  
Joe knew without elaboration what forms they were. The option had been open to them for nearly a year, but they hadn't been ready. It had been almost two years, now, though and they'd accepted that this was their future. Their crowded little house was home, even if Andy was spending more and more time enjoying the privacy of the apartment of the girl he'd been seeing in the next village. Privately, they still wished they had their own place, somewhere they could grow and not have to weigh up whether an 'early night' was worth Pete's innuendo by morning, but he'd be lonely if they left him and technically they were still married to other people - they still had other commitments to account for.  
  
Neither of them felt that it was their right to declare someone else's life over, even if the government invited them to, but there were other options available to them - things that freed them to move on.  
  
He lifted his head and looked up at him for a moment, before laying back down and nodding, the skin warm against his cheek.  
  
Later that same day, they sat with Patrick's Macbook on his lap and pressed the button on the website to request a dissolution pack. Twice.  
  
They carried on with their daily lives, helping teach at the little school they'd set up with the other adults, keeping their animals and tending the garden; taking care of each other and their found-family, and Louis, who was far less lazy now that he had a yard to play in and chickens to boss around.  
  
And it was on a perfect summer day, the forms filled out and sitting in their envelopes on the mantle, that Patrick crawled over him on the grass by the river, sitting across his hips and planting a hand either side of his shoulders, and said, "When we get everything signed off…?"  
  
Joe smiled peacefully at him and nodded, because that had been the whole point, really, that was what being free of the past meant.  
  
Patrick had kissed him, murmuring "I love you," and lay down when he'd received Joe's reply, sprawled on top of him until the warmth of the day and the gentle breeze and burbling of the water over the rocks lulled them both to sleep in the shade.  
  
\---  
  
He'd always remember it being a Tuesday. He wasn't sure why that was important, but it was indelibly scored into his memory.  
  
The air was stifling and still, he was spraying Louis with the garden hose in lieu of watering the vegetable patch. Andy and Pete had gone into the village, Patrick was at the chicken coop, repairing the wiring with a pair of pliers and the little wind up radio from the kitchen. It was playing _It's A Wonderful Life_ , and in that moment, it was.  
  
But then the chill had run over him like ice water and he'd scooped up the dog in his arms and ran, stumbling and grazing his knee, but getting up again, not sure if he was even breathing until he couldn't hear anything but his rasping as he grabbed Patrick's shirt and dragged him under cover.  
  
It was pointless, he realised, later, but he'd covered Patrick's mouth with his hand and curled them both into the shade, clinging tight to his arm until his fingernails left marks.  
  
They both watched them pass over. The same enormous black ships, silent and terrifying, exactly has they had been more than two years ago.  
  
There was horror on Patrick's face as he shook, whispering, "They're gonna take them -  oh God, oh God - they're gonna take them… What do we do?"  
  
He'd pressed his face into Patrick's hair, frozen in fear, and waited for something to happen. They both knew there was nothing they could do, now, any more than there had been the first time.  
  
It wasn't until they heard the sound of doors slamming in the front of the house that they looked at each other, and Joe realised that his eyes had been scrunched tightly closed. He had now idea how much time had passed.  
  
Patrick scrambled to his feet, first, Louis leaping up after him, Joe following as quickly as he could manage, cramped from being curled up on the floor for so long.  
  
They'd launched themselves into each other's arms, Andy picking Patrick up by the waist and lifting him clear of the floor in relief.  
  
Pete had just buried his face and both his hands in Joe's t-shirt and dragged them both to the floor, overwhelmed and cursing.  
  
They were all there. All safe. All together, still.  
  
None of them realised, at first, what it really meant.  
  
There was confusion, initially. Muddled news broadcasts and blackouts. Nobody seemed to know why they were back, because surely, there was nothing left to take. The internet - the parts of it that hadn't closed down with no one to run them or create their content - seemed frozen.  
  
There was nothing they could do but tune the little wind up radio to a station running news updates, and sit with it, beside the TV.  
  
It was almost midnight, when the news finally broke. The president in a dark blue suit, gazing into their souls through the television screen as he told them that something remarkable had happened, but they could all see that he was afraid; stressed in a way they didn't ordinary see in him.  
  
It quickly became clear why.  
  
All around the world, outside every major town and city, there had been deliveries. Deliveries of people, tired and confused, but apparently unharmed. People who didn't know what had happened, people who'd need homes and resources and food, and whose property, in many cases, had already been destroyed or lost, or handed to their next of kin.  
  
People whose whole lives had been left behind, intact, and who'd returned to find their homes scorched by electrical failures and their lives forever changed.  
  
Joe felt Patrick's hand grow tighter and tighter around his, squeezing his heart into his mouth at the prospect of what this might mean.  
  
It was Andy who picked up his phone first, dialling his mom's number again and again until finally there was a crackle and they all heard it - her voice on the line as she said, "Andrew? Andrew, are you there?"  
  
He didn't reply at first. He sank his head into his hands, for the first time since everything had happened, openly sobbing in front of them. "Mom, it's me. Are you okay? Where have you been? Where did they take you? Have you seen Matt?"  
  
There were more questions than any of them could ask and more than they'd ever have answered.  
  
Joe looked across at Patrick. He was shaken and pale and Joe tugged his hand free to wrap an arm around him, but he got to his feet quickly, wiping sweaty palms on his thighs and leaving the room. His footsteps pounded up the stairs before the clunk of the heavy lock on the bathroom door fell into place.  
  
It was Pete who made it to the door first, and Joe let him go, too shaken by the phone vibrating in his hand to know what to do.  
  
\---  
  
Not everyone had made it. There were lists on websites, with names and details of those they'd found. People being processed and vetted and quarantined to make sure they weren't Replicators or carrying alien viruses; and then there was the simple fact was that it had been over two years. Things had happened in that time - natural and unnatural - people had died, babies had been born, accidents had happened. And not just back home.  
  
Nobody could say exactly where they'd been. There were anecdotes in the news about those who were returned not realising how long they'd been gone, or that they'd been gone at all, but Pete didn't believe that. Trauma did things to people. They'd probably just blocked it out.  
  
Joe's mom was one of the ones they didn't bring home. He'd talked to his father that first night, his little brother in the morning - they'd been in different states when it happened and they still hadn't been reunited. Pete had watched him hold Patrick's hand until both their fingers went white and they were delirious from lack of sleep.  
  
They'd searched and searched for the names of family and friends, refreshing pages until newly processed lists were updated. Some of them were there, waiting to be released and contacted and brought home. He'd found Bronx early on - it was easier when the names were unique - and then Meagan, and then Ashlee. His parents were in Vermont, near the second home they planned to retire to.  
  
But he could see from the look on Patrick's face as he watched over Joe's shoulder, who they'd found and who they hadn't. He caught his eye as Joe clasped his hand over his mouth and his eyelids fell, Patrick's gaze flicking from the screen to Joe's face, to Pete's. He watched it crumple momentarily, before he wrapped his arms around Joe, pressing his forehead to the back of his shoulder as he murmured something Pete couldn't hear.  
  
They'd talked about the possibility of this - in the bathroom, after the news first broke - and he knew the anguish that was boiling inside his best friend's chest, the guilt and loss, the chronic martyr complex. And he knew Joe, too - knew that his sense of loyalty and obligation, the same things that had brought him back to Patrick when he'd been in despair, could be the very same things that took him away from Patrick, now. Because sitting on the mantle, next to a forgotten coffee cup and a photo of a little girl with red braids, were two identical envelopes that had never made it into the mail.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Florence + the Machine's _How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful_.
> 
> Quote credits:  
>  **Part 1** \- "I'll be in the desert just wishing on every star." - **Fall Out Boy** \- _Eternal Summer_ [Pax Am Days]  
>  **Part 2** \- "But I think our lifelines became too intertwined, and now we've paid the price." - **PVRIS** \- _Walk Alone_ [All We Know Of Heaven, All We Need Of Hell]  
>  **Part 3** \- "It always seemed like hell was just living, breathing." - **Creeper** \- _Poison Pens_ [Eternity, In Your Arms]  
>  **Part 4** \- "Every wound can be forgotten in the right light." - **Patrick Stump** \- _Spotlight_ [Soul Punk]  
>  **Part 5** \- "I was all of the things that you always dreamt and then never did." - **Creeper** \- _Black Rain_ [Eternity, In Your Arms]  
>  **Part 6** \- "I wouldn't leave here without you." - **Biffy Clyro** \- _Mountains_ [Only Revolutions]  
>  **Part 7** \- "After all this time I'm still into you." - **Paramore** \- _Still Into You_ [Paramore]
> 
> * * *
> 
> _This story became my entire life for over six months. I'd love to know your thoughts._ ♥

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Things We Have to Burn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12342795) by [heartofthesunrise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofthesunrise/pseuds/heartofthesunrise)




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